LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.) 



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WORDS OF COUNSEL 



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"THE REST OF FAITH." 



R. P. hipu-fc 



AUTHOR OF " HOLINESS THROUGH FAITH," " THROUGH 

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PREFACE. 



In a former work, " Holiness through Faith," I 
sought to show from the Scriptures, illustrated by 
the experiences of Christians, that the promises of 
God warranted our claiming an inwrought practical 
holiness through Christ, as well as an imputed com- 
pleteness in Him ; that these promises of grace are 
ever larger than His commands to be holy ; that, 
notwithstanding all the imperfections and infir- 
mities of our condition, we may, through " the 
obedience of faith," gain the Enoch testimony 
that we " please God ; " and that the power of 
victory is faith, and faith only. 

These pages, however, are specially addressed 
to those who have already realized this overcom- 
ing faith, and this conscious soul-union with the 
Lord; the experience sometimes defined by the 
term " The Higher Christian Life." Such practi- 
cally understand the limitations of our" meaning, 
when we speak of Abiding in Christ, Deliverance 
from Sin, the Rest of Faith, Full Salvation, Christ 



4 PREFACE. 

formed within, or Walking in the Spirit. Lest, 
however, I should be misunderstood by any, I would 
here ask that the terms used in this book should 
be interpreted by a brief statement of what we mean 
when we speak of " Walking in the Light? and of 
the consequent cleansing "from all sin." 

He walks in the light of God, who, without 
evasion, brings every action, emotion, and thought 
into the all-searching light of the presence of God. 
What the light reveals as evil, the soul rejects, 
and so " our fellowship is with the Father and with 
His Son Jesus Christ," — a fellowship in light. 
A walk in the light always leads to the blood, and 
all that the light shows of evil in our nature 
becomes effectually cleansed by the blood. 

" If we say that we have fellowship with Him, 
and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the 
truth ; but if we Walk in the Light, as He is in 
the light, we have fellowship one with another, 
and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth 
us from all sin." 1 John vi. 7. 

It is plain that these words are not addressed 
to an unconverted sinner. Such a one is never 
told to walk in the light and have fellowship with 
God before his sins can be pardoned. Neither is 
it intended for a backslider; for the chapter is 
written, "that your joy may be full," and " that 



PREFACE. 

ye sin not." It surely teaches that we are not only 
to be justified from all our sins, but also to be in- 
wardly cleansed "from all Sin" that deep evil of 
our nature, which is antecedent to sins or sinning. 
Absolute discernment of what evil is cannot be im- 
parted to us in our present dim twilight of knowl- 
edge. The angels in the perfection of their facul- 
ties, or Adam in his innocence, might perceive the 
true moral character of every emotion and action, 
but we cannot. God does not require of our facul- 
ties, so sadly darkened by the fall, a perfect knowl- 
edge, but He does both ask, and impart to faith, 
a perfect love, the full devotion of our hearts, such 
as they are in all their imperfection and weakness. 
That short-coming, which is not contrary to knowl- 
edge, or to love,* is not imputed to us, and is fully 
met by the atoning blood. 

It is evident that there may remain things not 
according to the perfect holiness of God in the life 
of the sanctified believer; things which in the 
early dawn have not yet been discovered to it. As 
the light increases, more and more is exposed of the 
remaining evil, and the soul continues to be prac- 
tically cleansed by the blood. In what sense this 

* " Love is the fulfilling of the Law." See care- 
fully Matt. xxii. 87 ; Mark xii. 30-33 ; Luke x. 27 ; John xiii. 
34, xv. 12; Horn. v. 5, xiii. 9, 10; Gal. v. 6, IS; Eph. i. 4; 
1 John Hi , ii. 23, iv. 7, 12, 1G : 



6 PKEFACE. 

unseen, unknown evil is, or is not, sin, I leave as a 
metaphysical question, and use the term in its ob- 
vious generally understood meaning, — that which 
brings a sense of condemnation or impurity. Prac- 
tically, I find myself with " a conscience (or knowl- 
edge) void of offense ; " and " if our heart condemn 
us not, then have we confidence toward God." 
Though we have not an absolute, unconditional 
sinlessness, it is an incalculable blessing and 
strength to the believer to have a happy heart, 
free from all known sin ; a heart now able to 
accept the consciousness that Christ does indeed 
cleanse "from all" sin, and dwell in the purified 
temple of the being. To this, faith brought us. 
In this, faith keeps us. A lapse of faith would 
restore our old condition of conscious inward evil 
and outward trespass. 

At this point of highest privilege is also the 
pinnacle of greatest danger. If we say that we 
have an inherent holiness, or " if we say that 
we have no sin," otherwise than as the blood 
momentarily cleanses us, "we deceive ourselves, 
and the truth is not in us." Such a delusion is 
a denial of the need of Christ, the assertion of 
a self-wrought holiness, and a clothing ourselves 
in the filthy rags of our own righteousness, ruin- 
ous to our souls and loathsome to God. 



PREFACE. 7 

As I trust Christ for cleansing, for the incom- 
ings of His own life, and for guidance, my soul 
is as a hand which has the needed health, life, and 
skill for its requirements successively, whether in 
infancy, boyhood, or maturity. Yet it is only 
through the constant supply of blood from the 
heart, and guidance from the head. Lessen the 
current of blood, the corrupt matter from the flesh 
is imperfectly carried off, and disease ensues. 
Interrupt the supply of blood by so much as 
the thickness of a piece of paper, and the hand 
resumes instantly its own natural proclivity to 
decay. Soon it will become a mass of offensive 
corruption. Palsy the nerves, and the hand moves 
feebly and uncertainly. Sever them, and the 
power to act is gone. And yet, through every 
moment of a long lifetime, from infancy to age, the 
process of decay may be prevented, the thrill of life 
enjoyed, and the guidance experienced. 

Even angels found sin, and ruin, when they 
ceased to depend on God's sustaining power. My 
condition is far below that of angels. I am under 
the shadow of sin through Adam, and of its de- 
velopment into sins by my own wickedness. 
There is a poison of sin in my condition, which 
it is the work of the cleansing blood to neutralize 
moment by moment. I have an inherent pro- 



8 PREFACE. 

clivity to corruption, which it is the work of the 
blood to overcome by the energy of life and 
health. I am without knowledge in myself, and 
it is the work of the guiding Spirit to make 
me wise. Thus in the blood I find cleansing 
and life, and inthe Spirit I find direction through 
every moment in which my faith takes Christ for 
wisdom. Each day reveals to me more and yet 
more of the wonders of grace which are in Christ 
Jesus, and in Him alone. 

It is no small pleasure to embody in this book 
two chapters, written by one who, converted to 
God the same day with myself, has, by her daily 
counsels and communion, continually opened the 
pathway of faith and holiness to my steps. 

With unfeigned humility I commit this book 
to the Lord, and to the consideration of my 
brethren. I pray that all which may be of God 
shall reach and bless the hearts of His children ; 
and that aught of misconception and failure may 
be prevented from causing the least of God's 
little ones to stumble. Whatever of mistake or 
of evil is in it is all my own, whatever of good is 
of God. 






CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 
Introductory 13 



CHAPTER II. 
Wavering Faith. . . . . . .26 

CHAPTER III. 
Progress 38 

CHAPTER IV. 
Dangers. 52 

CHAPTER V. 
Holy Habits of Soul 65 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Christian's Shout 87 

11 * 



12 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 
Failure 97 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Love, the Bond op Perfectness 110 

CHAPTER IX. 
Suffering with Christ 122 

CHAPTER X. 

The Baptism of the Spirit. . . . 134 



WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

" TTTHERE does the Scripture indicate that 
V V definiteness of experience, the Sabbath 
of the soul, the abiding inward Rest, in the enjoy- 
ment of which, continuous victory over the world 
and symmetrical growth in grace are possible ? I 
cannot deny, — it would not be candid to do so, — the 
reality of such ajife in Christ, as I have witnessed 
or known of in others ; nor that it corresponds 
with the Scripture standards of Christian privilege. 
If testimony proves anything, it proves a range and 
elevation of Christian experience, an inward soul- 
Sabbath, and an overcoming of evil, external or 
internal, such as I have not obtained. And yet 



14 WAKKDfG IN THE LIGHT. 

I do not see it defined as a distinct experience 
in the >:r:p:'.;res.' ? 

Such waa the candid question par to me a few 
days since, by a most earnest and intelligent Chris- 
tian, a minister presiding over an important school 
of the prophets, honestly desiring to know the 
truth of God and to live it 

The reply at once suggested was. ••'Everywhere! 
Definite and uniform victory over evil is taught 
everywhere, where Christian experience is dealt 
with. It permeates the whole doctrine of Scrip- 
tore. It is the only normal life recognised, and 
anything short of it is the exception. It is easier 
to dehne the character of a voyage to one who is 
making it, than to one who is only desiring to do 
so, or scarcely decided to venture for the first time 
upon the water. The experience of trusting the 
ocean, the wonderful deliverances when the ship, 
like a mere shell, lies in the great surging deep, 
and the secured results of the voyage, can be defi- 
nite only to him who has ventured his life upon the 
sea. So :: is :hose alone who have fully cast them- 
selves upon the promises of God. who can realize 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

how complete and definite is the preservation from 
evil." 

A CLEAN HEART CREATED. 

In its simplest form we find this definiteness in 
the words which suceeed the royal backslider's cry 
for pardon. " Have mercy upon me, O God : " 
" Blot out my transgressions : " are followed by 
the prayer, " Create in me a, clean heart, O God ; 
and renew a right spirit within me." Surely, any 
one of us will know definitely when a pure, holy 
and clean heart is created within us. Most Chris- 
tians say that it is not in them. A few who have 
long said the same thing, now testify that they have 
received, in answer to the prayer of faith, a heart 
fully cleansed by the blood of Jesus from the con- 
sciousness of inward defilement and passion. This 
is definitely stated by Scripture : " If we walk in 
the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship 
with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, 
His Son, cleanseth us from all sin " ; and it is defi- 
nitely realized in the experience of a Christian 
who has come to walk in the wonderful light and 
fellowship of God and the inward cleansing of the 



16 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

blood. The heart which can, without effort : , meet 
sarcasm and reproach with a divinely given love 
and gentleness ; a heart which does not answer to 
the calls of passion, and which finds, both in the 
agitating emergencies of life, and in the hourly 
minor trials of domestic intercourse, an undisturbed 
inward calm, has reached an experience of the 
cleansing of the blood in a definite form. 

ABIDING IN CHRIST. 

Most Christian professors, while conscious of 
loving the Lord Jesus and of desiring to obey Him, 
are also painfully aware that they do not abide in 
Him, in the definite manner in which a branch 
abides in the vine. They know that they have not 
in their consciousness proved that Word : " If a 
man love Me, he will keep My words : and My 
Father will love him, and We will come unto him 
and make Our abode with him." They have 
known at seasons the presence of the Father and the 
Son with them, but they have not yet realized the 
permanence of the abode of God in them. Now 
this is a definite promise in Scripture, and a no less 



INTRODUCTORY. 17 

definite realization of faith by the child of God, 
when he has, in entire consecration and trust, 
learned to abide in Christ, and have Christ ever 
more abiding in him. To him the promises affixed 
to abiding are now definitely realized, — the sinning 
not, the much fruit and the answered prayers.* 

WALKING IN THE SPIRIT. 

Walking in the Spirit, with its pledged results 
of not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, is a definite 
condition of the soul. The withering up of the 
workings of the flesh and the bearing of the fruits 
of the Spirit, form a definite experience beyond any 
probable mistake in the consciousness. " Love, 
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
faith, meekness, temperance," these things are not 
an indefinite dreamy condition of soul, nor the 
sending out, " at the same place, sweet water and 
bitter," but the outflow of a cleansed heart, con- 
sciously and definitely received through faith by 
the believer. 

* See 1 John iii. 6; John xv. 6; John xv. 7. 



18 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

REST. 

It is, again, definite Rest to the soul, when, hav- 
ing before put away many weights, it has at length, 
to its own consciousness, laid aside the very last 
one, and the easily besetting sin of unbelief, and 
has risen to God in perfect freedom of soul. It 
can now run with patience the race set before it, 
because it is freed from burdens and looking only 
up to Jesus, who, having been the divine Author 
of its fltit h, is also the finisher or maturer (see 
Greek) of it also. The heart to whom Jesus has 
given Rest from the guilt of sin, now, in its entire 
abandonment to Him, assumes the yoke of obedi- 
ence without reserve or qualification, and finds that, 
— at length unresisted, — it no longer galls. The 
soul has come, definitely come, to Christ. It has, 
with equal definiteness, bowed beneath the all- 
comprehensive yoke, in meekness and lowliness of 
heart, and it has found the second Rest promised, 
in a deep inward Sabbath-keeping of the soul. 
The one Rest Jesus gives to the weary burden- 
bearer, the second is found by the meek and lowly 
yoke- wearer. 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

If we examine the history of the children of 
Israel, we find that the wilderness gave no true 
Rest. It witnessed a continual succession of back- 
slidings, in the very .presence of the tabernacle, 
with all its provisions for pardon and cleansing. 
It was not the fulfillment of God's promise to 
Abraham, but the consequence of limiting the Holy 
One of Israel at Kadesh Barnea, in His power to 
give victory over God's enemies. It was, how- 
ever, a definite experience when the Israelites left 
behind them the wilderness, the scene of failure, 
trusted Jehovah in the person of Joshua, (or Jesus,) 
and crossed the Jordan in triumph. It is a no less 
definite experience when the Christian, who has 
long wandered in the wilderness-round of sinning 
and repenting, at length rolls away the reproach of 
Egyptian worldliness,and enters into the Rest pre- 
pared for the people of God, — the soul's inward 
Sabbath-keeping, — in unlimited consecration and 
trust. 

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 

In no part of Scripture is this Christian experi- 
ence stated more definitely and exhaustively than 



WALKING IN" THZ LIGHT. 

the six: er of Romans. This is not the 

-iiverance :: the Red Sea of the third chapter 
over again, bat the life across the Jordan. It 
meets the all-important question :s to whether the 
redeemed shall continue to sin. and shows that our 
refuge, our only refuge, from the horrid workings 
of indwelling corruption, is to be found in an 
: aal, realized crucifixion and death with Christ, 
"that the body of sin might be destroyed, that 
we should not serve sin." 
zified for us has been preached of 
late yens with a blessed and almost unexampled 
] isfl .ess, but the time has now come when 

the mission of the church is to preach, with no less 
emphasis and distil:: i-tian's cruci- 

fixion with Christ and deadness : ith the 

: sequent life unto righteousness. 

DEUVKB LKCI 

In the seventh of Romans we re experi- 

e of a Christian turned back to walk for the 

time scenes ire. It is the 

experience of a true Christian, though not a true 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

Christian experience. It is only necessary to ob- 
serve how exactly, alas ! it reflects the too common 
condition of the redeemed from verses ten to 
twenty-four, in order to decide as to whom it 
applies. It does not repeat the lesson of the third 
chapter, but unfolds the entrance into the wonder- 
ful soul-Rest of the eighth chapter. He whom it 
represents is indeed a u wretched man," so long 
as he, while delighting in the will of God in his 
inmost soul, yet finds himself brought into cap- 
tivity to the law of sin in his members, — continu- 
ally grieving Him whom bis soul loves and adores. 
But how definitely does the way of deliverance 
open to his gaze in reply to his exclamation of need 
and agony, " O wretched man that I am ! Who 
shall deliver me?" Christ, once clasped in the 
soul's extremity of need for pardon, is now again 
embraced in its agony of desire for deliverance from 
inward corruption. 

The eighth chapter of Romans is as definite an 
experience of victory, as the seventh chapter was 
definite in failure, and no transition in the whole 
Scripture, save in conversion, is so definitely 



22 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

marked as this soul-crisis at the vision of Christ 
as a Deliverer from sinning. 

As the experience of condemnation, in the third 
chapter of Romans, culminated in the charge, 
" For all have sinned and come short of the glory 
of God," followed in the same sentence by the 
release, " Being justified freely by His grace, 
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," — 
just so, the experience of indwelling sin, in the 
seventh chapter, culminates in the exclamation of 
bondage and agony, " O ! wretched man that I am, 
who shall deliver me from this body of sin ? " and 
is followed in the same breath by the joyful cry, 
'•'I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord !"' 
He is at once, and by the same way of faith, our 
Deliverer from condemnation and from bondage. 
The eighth chapter of Romans is as definite a 
triumph over sinfulness, as are the fourth and fifth 
chapters over condemnation for sinning. 

CHRIST FORMED WITHIN. 

It was no indefinite, general thought of progress, 
which filled the soul of Paul when he groaned that 



INTRODUCTORY. 23 

Christ might be formed in the hearts of the Gala- 
tian converts ; and when he told them that he did 
not himself frustrate, by any self-imposed barriers, 
the grace of God, he gave the key to the definite 
statement, " I am crucified with Christ : never- 
theless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; 
and the life which 1 now live in the flesh, I live 
by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and 
gave Himself for me." 

A YOUNG CONVERT'S QUESTION. 

As he sat in a railway car, an intelligent young 
man who had just commenced to read the Scrip- 
tures daily, but to whom they had been as yet an 
enigma, was led to see that salvation is through 
faith only and in Christ alone. He trusted Christ 
for pardon, and as he realized that in believing he 
became the possessor of eternal life, after a few 
minutes' solemn pause he asked, §l But will this 
trust in Christ keep me from sinning ? " The 
answer was, " Definite faith in Christ for pardon 
frees your soul from the load of guilt arid condem- 
nation which has weighed upon you, and has a 



24 * WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

tendency to make sin hateful to you ; but to fully 
meet the bias of your nature towards sin, your faith 
must receive Christ definitely in another of His 
relations to your soul. You must come to Him in 
full consecration, to receive effectual inward cleans- 
ing by His blood. You have just learned the 
lesson of trusting Jesus to blot out all your iniqui- 
ties, and He has done it. Now, — with this lesson 
fresh before you, — come to Him for a clean heart 
within, and a full victory without. Can you doubt 
that, having saved your soul from death, He is 
ready to keep your feet from falling ? ' As ye 
have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in 
Him. 5 " 

It would seem as definite an experience to trust 
Christ for holiness of heart as for pardon. George 
Miiller can definitely trust the living God to sup- 
ply near two thousand souls under his care with all 
their temporal needs day by day. Cannot a child 
of God trust Christ as definitely to supply one poor 
weak but confiding heart with all it needs of holi- 
ness, from moment to moment ? The evil Hero- 
dias claimed the King's promise, and he dare not 



INTRODUCTORY. 25 

refuse even the half of his kingdom. Is God less 
to be trusted ? Are His promises of cleansing and 
preservation from evil, to His saints who will trust 
them, less secure than those of pardon to the 
sinner who will trust them ? Is not " the power 
of God " pledged to the keeping of God's family as 
fully as to the forgiveness of the repentant wan- 
derer ? All the attributes of God are involved in 
the smallest of His pledges to the least of His 
trusting children. Happiest he w r ho most perfectly 
honors God by definitely committing himself to 
the inviolable "I will" of a covenant-keeping 
God! 



CHAPTER II. 



WAVERING FAITH. 



y^ OD'S unalterable plan, in all His dealings 

V_Jl with the souls of men, is — " According to 

your faith be it unto you." 

The awakened sinner, seeking the forgiveness of 

his sins, may wrestle, and agonize, and plead with 

all the fervor and earnestness of which he is capable, 

but, until he believes, he cannot find peace. God 

does not deal with him according to the amount or 

fervor of his wrestlings or pleadings, but according 

to his faith. The moment he has faith to be saved, 

that moment he is saved, and never until then. 

The reason of this is, that God's salvation is not a 

purchase to be made, nor wages to be earned, nor 

a summit to be climbedj nor a height to be attained, 

but simply and only a gift to be received. And 

nothing but faith can receive any gift from God. 

But if this is His rule with regard to the poor 
(26) 



WAVERING FAITH. 27 

awakened sinner, how much more must it be as 
regards His own family of children, who have been 
born of the Spirit, and upon whom He has bestowed 
all the riches and treasures that are in Christ. To 
them most assuredly, His word is — " What things 
soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye 
receive them, and ye shall have them." 

When, therefore, the child of God begins to be 
dissatisfied with the failing, halting experience, 

which is the too general condition of the church, 

■ 

and begins to hunger and thirst after that higher 
life of victory, and of abiding rest, which he sees 
some other Christians enjoying, and which he real- 
izes is his privilege also, what is an absolutely 
necessary condition to his entering into the blessed 
experience he seeks ? Of course the first condition 
is consecration, because none but the fully conse- 
crated can fully believe. In order for the Lord 
Jesus to heal us, we must be willing to be healed, 
and must give ourselves up to His healing power. 
But I presuppose all this, and address only those 
souls who are conscious of being fully given up to 
the Lord, as far as they have light to see. And 



28 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

surely to such the rule applies, with even greater 
power than to the unconverted, if that could be, 
that according to their faith it shall be unto them. 

But this principle is not always clearly recog- 
nized, and the result is that many longing souls are 
delayed for months, and even for years, from enter- 
ing into the land of rest, whose borders they have 
long before reached. 

Satan understands this matter perfectly. He 
knows what God's plan is, and therefore his princi- 
pal attacks are directed against our faith, and he 
knows how to come in such a garb as completely 
to deceive the unsuspecting soul. In the first 
place he occupies such a soul with itself, with its 
own goodness or badness, with its frames and feel- 
ings, with its fervor or its coldness, and thus effect- 
ually hinders it from looking at Jesus, and seeing 
in Him a Saviour who is able to save to the very 
uttermost. 

And then in the second place, when, through 
the grace of God, the believer has been brought 
out of this snare, and has been enabled for a blessed 
moment to take a definite step of faith, and to cast 



WAVERING FAITH. 29 

himself wholly upon the Lord Jesus, believing that 
He does receive him, and does indeed save him 
from the power, as well as from the guilt of his 
sins; then Satan, baffled in his first purpose, 
endeavors to make this faith a wavering, intermit- 
tent faith, and thus effectually hinders onward 
progress, or increasing light. It is of this point, 
especially, I desire to write just now, because 
I am sure that much if not all of the unsatisfactory 
experience of those who have really entered the 
higher life, arises from this cause. 

I address myself, therefore, to the dissatisfied, 
rather than to the seekers. You have sought and 
found this Rest in Christ at one time, dear Chris- 
tian, and for awhile you rejoiced in it greatly. 
But a cloud seems to have come over your experi- 
ence and you cannot discover what has caused it. 
Your sky is not clear. Your communion is inter- 
rupted, your victories are intermittent. And yet 
you are not conscious of having taken back any 
part of your consecration, nor of being at present 
in the indulgence of anything contrary to the will 
of God. 



30 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

If this is not the case, and you have a secret 
feeling in the bottom of your heart, of some want 
of conformity to the will of God, then, of course, 
I am not addressing you, and for you there is one 
step absolutely necessary before you can possibly 
take any other. You must get on believing ground 
again, before you can again believe, and this ground 
is that of entire consecration to God. But you 
know this, and I need not enlarge. 

At present I have to do with only those who 
desire, above everything else, to be altogether the 
Lord's, but who seem to find a veil which hides 
the fullness of Christ from their gaze, and who are 
hungry and thirsty in the very presence of the per- 
fect supply. To such I can only say, according to 
your faith it shall be unto you. Your difficulties 
all arise from the wavering character of your faith. 
You do not hold the beginning of your confidence 
steadfast unto the end. You have not believed 
steadfastly, that which you believed at first. The 
definite trust in the Lord Jesus, which you exer- 
cised then, and which brought you such wonderful 
victory and rest, has become indefinite and uncertain. 



WAVERING FAITH. 31 

Satan has been turning your attention to yourself. 
He says to you, " Look at your heart and at your 
life. See how cold you are, how indifferent, how 
far from being what you ought to be. How can 
you for a moment dare to believe that Jesus saves 
you, and makes you holy ? " And you have listened 
to him, and, turning your eyes off of Jesus, have 
begun to doubt. And doubt can have but one 
result. If it is to be to us according to our faith, 
then, of course, it will be also according to our 
doubt. And your very doubts have produced just 
the results you dreaded. Jesus cannot fully save a 
doubting soul. Remember this. And the moment 
you find yourself beginning to doubt, stop right off 
short, and think of what will be the inevitable con- 
sequences. 

If you doubt, your consecration is fruitless, your 
efforts are unavailing, your pleadings are unan- 
swered. God has said it — that unless we ask in 
faith, nothing doubting, we need not think to 
receive anything from the Lord. Doubt is fatal. 
And yet, so completely has Satan blinded your 
eyes on this point, that you, it may be, look upon 



32 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

it as an almost necessary condition of your nature. 
How often we hear a child of God say, with even 
complacency, " Oh, but I am such a doubter ! " as 
though this peculiar weakness of theirs excused 
them for all their other short-comings ; while we 
never hear a Christian say, complacently — " Oh, 
but I am such a liar," and make that an excuse for 
his failures. And yet in the sight of God, to 
doubt is, in some cases, as displeasing to Him as to 
lie ; sometimes I think almost more so, because it 
is so dishonoring to His faithfulness. No form of 
wickedness ever hindered the Lord Jesus, while on 
earth, from doing His mighty works, except the 
wickedness of unbelief. And you, dear Christian, 
are as completely hindering His mighty work in 
your soul, by your unbelief, as the Samaritans hin- 
dered Him by theirs. I am sure, if you realized 
this, you would not dare to doubt. But is it not 
true ? Do you think God has made a mistake, and 
that the man that doubteth can receive something 
from the Lord? Have you not invariably found 
that doubting has brought you into darkness and 
unrest, and finally into sin ? 



WAVERING FAITH. 33 

But you ask, " How, then, can I get rid of this 
doubting?" I will tell you. Consecrate your 
power of believing to the Lord Jesus, just a,s you 
have consecrated all your other powers, and trust 
Him to keep you trusting. You have so absolutely 
yielded yourself up to the Lord to obey His voice, 
that you would not dare to disobey Him. Yield 
yourself up to Him now, to believe His Word, in 
the same absolute and irrevocable way, and you 
will feel then that neiftier do you dare to doubt. 
Make your believing as inevitable and necessary a 
thing as your obedience is. You would obey God, 
I believe, even though you should die in the act. 
Believe Him also, even though the effort to believe 
should cost you your life. The conflict may be 
very severe, it may seem at times unendurable. 
But let your unchanging declaration be from hence- 
forth, "I will not suffer myself to doubt. I choose 
to believe." 

When Satan comes with his suggestions of doubt, 
meet him with more positive assertions of your faith 
than ever you have made before. I say, when Satan 
comes, because all doubts are from him, and all 



34 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

discouragements also. The Holy Spirit never sug- 
gests a thought of doubt or discouragement to any 
soul. Never ! Settle this matter once for all, and 
you will find the way wonderfully cleared. Your 
doubts, then, are all from Satan, and you know he 
has been a liar from the beginning. Do not give 
heed to them, therefore, for a moment. Turn from 
them with horror, as you would from blasphemy. 
You cannot help their being suggested to you. You 
cannot help hearing the swearing of boys along the 
street, but you can help stopping to listen to it ; 
and you can equally well help listening to these 
suggestions of doubt. A very good practical way 
to baffle Satan in this matter, is to go at once and 
confess somewhere,or to some one, your faith that 
Jesus does save you now fully, and that His blood 
does cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Or, if 
this is not possible, write it in a letter, or else con- 
fess it aloud to yourself and to God. Satan always 
flees when the precious blood of Christ is trusted 
in and confessed. But however you do it, of one 
thing make sure, that you never doubt again. 
According to your faith it shall be unto you ; and 



WAVERING FAITH. 35 

while you are trusting Jesus to save you from sin- 
ning, and to make you pure in heart, He is abso- 
lutely pledged to do it. He cannot fail. " What 
things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that 
ye receive them, and ye shall have them." 

I want to be very practical, because I am sure 
many a heart is going bowed down in secret from 
this fatal habit of doubting. Many of my readers 
could, I am convinced, testify to the truth of this. 
They know that their wavering faith is the cause 
of their wavering experience. One day they have 
believed that Jesus did indeed save them from sin 
and from sinning, and it has been so in their 
experience. Bat the next day they have looked 
at themselves, and have begun to doubt, and their 
experience has corresponded to their doubts. Let 
all this be past, and from henceforth start out on a 
path of unwavering, steady faith. Believe stead- 
fastly, through everything, no matter what conies, 
just what you believed at first, upon your entering 
into this blessed " Higher Life " ; and never doubt 
it again. If the step of faith you took then, was 
to reckon yourself to be dead unto sin, continue 



86 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

thus to reckon, without wavering. If it was to 
believe that the blood of Jesus cleansed you from 
all unrighteousness, go on believing this steadily 
and without any compromise. Or if it simply 
came to you as a faith that Jesus saved you fully, 
exercise that very same faith now, and keep exer- 
cising it continually without intermission. Or what- 
ever it may have been, hold it steadfast, even unto 
the very end, for " We are made partakers of 
Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence 
steadfast unto the end," and there is no other way. 
Let nothing shake your faith. Should even sin 
unhappily overtake you, still you must not doubt. 
At once on the discovery of it, take 1 John i. 9, and 
act on it,, " If we confess our sins, He is faithful 
and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness." Confess your sin, 
therefore, immediately upon the discovery of it, 
and believe at once that God does forgive it, and 
does again cleanse you from all unrighteousness ; 
and go on believing it. Believe it more firmly 
than ever. Believe it, because He says it, and not 
because you feel it or see it. Believe it, whether 



WAVERING FAITH. 37 

you feel it or not. Believe it, even when it seems 
to you that you are believing something that is 
absolutely untrue. Believe it actively and persist- 
ently, and according to your faith it shall be unto 
you. 

Oh, that my words could save any poor doubting 
soul from its sad and weary experience ! My heart 
yearns over all such with a tender sympathy. I 
know how sincere you are, and how earnest, and 
how hard you struggle to reach the abiding experi- 
ence, which your conscience tells you is the only 
true one. And I know, also, how that fatal habit 
of doubting effectually holds you back. In order 
to have abiding rest, there must be an abiding faith. 
An intermittent faith always brings an intermittent 
rest. Oh, when will you learn this lesson ? 

Would that I could write in letters of light 
before your eyes, God's unalterable rule — accord- 
ing to your faith it shall be unto you ! 

(h. w. s.) 



CHAPTER III. 

PROGRESS. 

THE expectation of some concerning the walk 
of the redeemed, who through faith have en- 
tered practically upon the a Highway of holiness," 
has been framed as though it were not a zcay, but 
a place, without further progress in the divine life, 
a place secured from the assaults of temptation, 
where there was little need to take heed lest we 
fall, and where there was an uniform flow of 
intense feelings of joy. Far from this, we have 
out now found the hindrances removed from an 
endless progression in the divine life ; Satan uses 
\\s most potent resources upon those who are within 
the citadel, if possible, to draw them out ; we walk 
by faith only, and should our faith fail, we stum- 
ble ; and, though, on the one hand, we rejoice 
almost unvaryingly in the Saviour's presence and 
smile, we at the same time suffer, in filling up 



PROGRESS. 39 

that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, 
the keenest sorrow in beholding the perishing mul- 
titudes around us, and the faithlessness of the pro- 
fessing church. We are anxious, soberly, sin- 
cerely, and without exaggeration, to set before the 
believer who has found the commencement of a 
life of full union with Jesus, the progress, the 
dangers and the trials, of practical resurrection-life. 
So much has been written about the entrance, 
that we fear this " Highway " may have seemed 
like a succession of commencements. There is a 
continual advance, and many distinct stages of 
progress, in this walk of faith, but nevertheless the 
entrance is mostly as clearly defined to the Chris- 
tian as was the passage of the Jordan to the Isra- 
elites redeemed out of Egypt. Alas, that so many 
who have beheld the grapes of Eschol, who have 
heard the united testimony of the faithful spies, 
and who have been urged to an immediate entrance, 
should have shrunk from stepping upon the land, 
and, through unbelief, come short of the Rest that 
remaineth for the people of God ! It is indeed, they 
argue, fouthe specially gifted of heaven, but "not 



40 WALKING IN THE LICHT. 

for me " — forgetting that all distinctions between 
men have, in God's sight, been obliterated, first by 
their common rain, and then by the common grace 
opened to all by the cross of Christ. Such know 
how they would be the first to answer a similar 
plea in regard to the forgiveness of sins ; but they 
strangely cling to their unbelief, and the alleged 
impossibility of such as they are ever entering into 
Rest. Once more entreating them to allow such 
unbelief no apology or quarter, we would speak a 
little to those who, having believed, "do enter into 
Rest." 

Although we look forward to the time when the 
Church, the Bride of Christ, shall find rest in her 
Lord's bosom, when Israel shall rest in the land 
under the rule of Messiah, and when even the 
dumb creation on the manifestation of the sons of 
God shall rest from its groaning ; yet there is a 
present Rest, a Sabbath-keeping of the soul (Heb. 
iv. 9, margin), into which many hearts have defi- 
nitely entered by faith. Self has ceased to be the 
centre of its own little world, and One worthy of 
being so has become the absorbing object of its 



PROGRESS. 41 

affections, existence, and hopes. As is expressed 
of an earthly affection by the poet — 

" Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the 

chords with might ; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music 

out of sight" 

The soul has learned and is learning the lesson of 
forgetfulness of self, and of all that is behind. The 
vision of Jesus has not only put sins away, but 
human righteousness vanishes before it. The light 
of day not only dispels the darkness, but it hides 
the stars which shone in the darkness. Not only 
are past sins forgotten, but every ground of self- 
confidence, and even the soul's past progress; for 
it is reaching forward, in an infinite progression, 
toward the prize of the high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus. 

As the Christian advances on the " Highway of 
holiness," occupied with Jesus, rather than with 
temptation or sin, there is found the simplicity of 
a child, who does not analyze his emotions, but 
with naturalness gives play to them. The effort 
to love and the self-reproach of the heart for wan- 



42 WALKING EN THE LIGHT. 

dering affections are gone, for the soul has learned 
to dwell in love, and thus to dwell in God. (1 
John iv. 16.) Although this Rest may not come 
in all its fullness at once, when the soul first finds 
victory over the world, it is the result of walking 
in the Spirit, and it grows imperceptibly as a holy 
habit in the Christian, who becomes conscious of 
it rather by its results than by any effort in its 
attainment. If effort there be, it is the effort to 
cease from his own works, that he may enter into 
Eest. 

Thus the Christian becomes as a little child, and 
is trained in the kingdom of heaven, which con- 
sists in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost. He knows his deliverance from the power 
of darkness, and his translation into the kingdom 
of God's dear Son, as a present, inward, realized 
fact. He finds the accomplishment of that prom- 
ise, " He that hath my commandments, and keep- 
eth them, he it is that loveth Me ; and he that 
loveth Me shall be loved of my Father, and I 
will love him, and will manifest myself to him." 
A holy intimacy with Jesus is formed by the soul, 



PROGRESS. 43 

leading to a constant intercourse as real as that 
with the dearest of earthly friends, and infinitely 
more satisfying. With a heart " purified by faith," 
the Christian, — now " pure in heart," — finds his 
vision no longer occupied with the world, self, and 
sin, for he sees God, and is occupied with Christ. 
Beyond even this manifestation of God, the soul 
knows the Father and the Son, in the sober cer- 
tainty of a consciousness which becomes- the reality 
of the promise, u My Father will love him, and we 
will come unto him, and malce our abode with 
him." An abode is a permanent dwelling-place. 
" I bear within me," said an eminent Christian, 
" the divine verity of the triune God ; " and 
nothing short of this fulfills the Word of God, and 
the eternal purposes of man's redemption. 

Christian progress is not necessarily a constant 
succession of stumblings and risings, an endless 
soiling and recleansing of the garments. He who 
said, u Thy sins are forgiven thee," can as easily 
say also, " Rise up and walk." He who washed 
us whiter than snow is able to preserve us from 
defiling the garments which He has bestowed upon 



44 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

us. As the Christian more and more experiences 
that Jesus is able to keep the heart which has been 
committed unto Him, the spirit of fear is replaced 
by the spirit " of power, and of love, and of a 
sound mind." Putting on the new man, "which, 
after God, is created in righteousness and true holi- 
ness," the heart is open to receive the assurances of 
the love of Jesus, with the same freedom and sim- 
plicity with which the assurance of pardon was 
received. While the heart was conscious of any 
separation of self-will from God, it w T as, and must 
be, always slow to apprehend the expression of 
affection and tender sympathy from Christ ; # but 

*SeeEph. v. " If these affections be not understood as passing 
between Christ and the saint, if we do not without reserve allow this 
satisfaction with each other, our souls will not enter into much of that 
communion which the Scripture provides for. We should allow and 
entertain the thought of Christ's delight in the saints with the same 
certainty that we allow the thought of His having purchased and sanc- 
tified them by His blood. But this communion must spring from intelli- 
gence of the soul, or it will be mere natural fervor. . . . The love of 
kindred warrants the deepest intimacies. There is ease in coming in 
and going out. Expressions of love are not deemed intrusive, nay, 
are sanctioned as due and comely. The heart knows its right to 
indulge itself over its object , and tbat without check or shame. This 
is the glory of this affection, the richest feast of the heart. It is the 
persons, not their qualities, that form the ground of our love to our 
kindred. It is Himself that the heart embraces, not His sorrows, 
favors, or excellences. 

"Do we believe this? Does it make us happy? We are naturally 
suspicious of any efforts to make us happy in God, because our mora' 



PROGRESS. 45 

now, in the consciousness of the cleansing of the 
blood, it launches out on the boundless ocean 
of the love of God. It comes to " know the love 
of Christ," while yet it is conscious that it " pass- 
eth knowledge." Hungering and thirsting for 
righteousness, it has come to Jesus and been 
" filled," and yet never did it know such 

** Quenchless yearnings for a holier life." 

" Perfect," yet " not already perfected ; " " satisfied," 
yet " hungering and thirsting ;" at rest, and yet ear- 
nestly contending;" knowing the love of Christ, 
yet panting to comprehend what is its breadth and 
length, and depth, and height ; always rejoicing, 
yet sorrowful ; — an inward knowledge of God has 
solved all the paradoxes of His Word. God mul- 

sense, our natural conscience, tells us of having lost all right to even 
Hi3 ordinary blessings. The mere moral sense will therefore be quick 
to stand to it, and question all overtures of peace from heaven, and be 
ready to challenge their reality. Faith gainsays these conclusions of 
nature. It refuses at times to think according to the moral sense of 
nature. ... In the revelation of God, faith reads our abundant title to 
be near Him, and be happy with Him, though natural conscience and 
our sense of the fitness of things would have it otherwise. Faith feeds 
where the natural sensibilities of the natural miod would count it pre- 
sumptiGP to tread. 

"Dow ponder without suspicion or reserve the thoughts of such 
love toward us in the heart of Jesus ? Docs it make us happy ? How 
are we to meet this way of Christ's heart to us ? n 



46 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

tiplies His blessings where there is faith to receive 
them, so that again and again yesterday's privileges 
seem but as the twilight before the dawn, — veri- 
fying the Word that u the path of the just is as 
the shining light, that shineth more and more 
unto the perfect day." 

Service for Jesus has now become not only a 
happy freedom, but a sacred joy, for it is done for 
Him whose eye alone the heart now cares for. The 
rejoicing with the found sheep is sanctified by the 
higher and more sacred privilege of sharing the 
joy of the Shepherd. Intercessory prayer becomes 
the attitude rather than the effort of the soul, and 
in self-forgetfulness the heart prays " without ceas- 
ing," and draws down the blessings of God upon 
all around it* Of self- " sacrifice," or effort, the 
soul almost loses the consciousness, for the affec- 
tions that cling to what needs to be sacrificed, are 
withered and replaced by the soul-absorbing union 
with Jesus. The judgment of those around loses 
both its restraining and its stimulating effect, as the 
heart realizes that it has 

■• None to please but Jesus. 11 



PROGRESS. 47 

His approval and smile satisfy all the desires of 
the heart. It is wonderful what calmness this gives 
in the simplest conversation, or equally in meeting, 
under circumstances of overwhelming responsi- 
bility, the largest audiences. All sense of lonelinese 
is gone, be the surroundings a desert or a crowd, 
since Jesus is present in the soul ; and the heart 
finds in His constant company not satiety, but 
increasing joy. These heavenly privileges are 
multiplied through the faith that no longer expects 
any break in the current of its holy intimacy with 
Jesus, but rather that it shall increase from day to 
day, and year to year. A deaf ear is turned to 
those who, to their own soul's infinite loss, a limit 
the Holy One of Israel," in His grace and gifts. 
The soul expects, — confidently counts upon, — con- 
tinually increasing blessings. It listens to the 
voice to which Israel would not give heed, " I am 
the Lord thy God, which brought thee up out of 
the land of Egypt : open thy mouth wide and I 
will fill it" The soul has brought all its tithes, 
the very last and least, into God's storehouse, and 
now finds the windows of heaven open, so that the 



48 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

poor vessel sometimes feels that it has not rcom to 
contain all the blessings now poured out. It no 
longer speaks of its own desires as separate from 
the will of God, but finds an instinctive inward 
conformity to Him, who now works in the soul to 
will 9 as well as to do of His good pleasure. The 
sounds of the world grow fainter and more distant 
as the melody of heaven occupies his heart more 
exclusively. Even the active callings of life can- 
not destroy this divine fellowship, for faith is above 
all circumstances. Love cannot be quenched by 
many waters, neither can floods drown it. 

It is impossible by our painfully insufficient 
words to convey what the realization of this union 
with Jesus is to the soul. The writer has been 
blessed by having the ties of human affection 
towards those nearest to him in life sealed by fel- 
lowship in Jesus ; but no union of purpose, no 
unrestraint of soul, no abandonment of heart in the 
intercourse of affection, could possibly equal the 
sacred intimacy and entire " Rest," which he finds 
in his Lord and Saviour. Nor is the deep sense of 
reality exceeded in any outward intercourse with 



PROGRESS. 49 

those nearest and dearest in life. Sooner would 
we doubt the evidences of our senses than the 
Spirit witnessing directly with our spirit. Surely 
in redeeming us out of the world by His own 
blood, there should be nothing short of full union 
of heart with Jesus in those " elect according to 
the foreknowledge of God the Father, through 
sanctiflcation of the Spirit, unto obedience, and 
sprinkling of the blood of Jesus/' and " who 
are kept by the power of God thraugh faith." 
How much of privilege, of joy, of service, and 
of reward, those miss . who turn away from the 
fullness of this union with Jesus as impossible for 
them. 

When the Christian has thus become practically 
buried by baptism into death, to the world, and 
self, and finds himself risen with Christ, he is able 
to walk in that newness of life in which old things 
are passed away, and all things have become new. 
He is no longer occupied with the contemplation 
of sin, and is not expecting to trespass. Yet even 
the victory over sin and self is but the negative 
part of sanctification, if we may so speak. The 



50 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

positive form is found in the affections and activi- 
ties of the soul, which, having the. hindrances of 
a habit of sinning removed, is capable of being 
filled by the Spirit, and thus fitted for a work above 
and beyond all of its natural capacities. Kept by 
grace through faith in holy union with a risen 
Saviour, a partaker of the divine nature, we can set 
no limit to what God may work by a believer who 
thus loses his own life for Jesus' sake, and finds 
the life of Christ filling the soul. 

The song of holy trust and triumph is emphati- 
cally a " song of degrees," and in thus setting 
forth these privileges, we would have none who 
have put their whole trust in Jesus for preserva- 
tion, to be discouraged, because it is with them only 
the dawning of the day of full deliverance. The 
Sun of Righteousness will arise with effectual heal- 
ing in His wings. What Augustine says of love, 
may be applied to this walk of full trust in Jesus 
— " Is love made perfect the moment it is born ? 
So far from it, it is born in order that it may be 
brought to perfection. When it has been born, it 
is nourished ; when it has been nourished, it is 



PROGRESS. 51 

strengthened ; when it has been strengthened, it is 
made perfect." 

Let us set our standard of privilege as high as 
God has set it in His Word ; cry " Lord, increase 
our faith;" and be ourselves willing to have it 
increased according to God's measure and 
standard. 



CHAPTER IV. 



DANGERS. 



rT may seem strange to speak of the clangers of 
-*- a walk in Christ, for it is essentially a walk of 
safety, and indeed the only place of safety. Christ 
is our fortress,in which we are beyond the range of 
the enemy's shafts. The danger, however, is not 
in a position " in Christ," bat in the liability to be 
drawn out of oux " rock," our "fortress," by sud- 
den temptation, or by lying disguises — from Satan's 
transformation into an angel of light, down to the 
various forms of " the sleight of men, and cunning 
craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." 
Xhe devil, with his superhuman intellect, and six 
thousand years of experience in deceiving man, is 
a fearful adversary : the world presents not only 
gross temptation, but many fair shows of religious- 
ness ; and the flesh, or "body of sin," though 

" destroyed " and " dead," may, by want of con- 
1752) 



DAGGERS. 53 

tiaued refuge in resurrection-life, " revive " in all 
its activity. And should we leave our strong tower, 
none more liable to outward trespass than those who 
have abandoned even the failing reeds of self-effort 
and vows, which sometimes restrain the external 
manifestation of an inward separation from Christ. 
The world, the flesh, and the devil are all against 
us. In a scene where nearly all distrust God, the 
sight of a being in utter self-helplessness, with such 
enemies, and yet, through God, triumphing over 
all, is a spectacle for heavenly hosts, and becomes 
a special mark for the darts of Satan. 

Even in the vigorous youth of the early churches, 
founded under the guidance of the Apostles them- 
selves, the leaven of corruption began to work. 
The Romans had to be cautioned not to judge their 
brethren, and set them at naught. The Corinthi- 
ans had failed to purge out moral sin from their- 
midst; the Galatians, having begun in the spirit, 
were seeking to be made perfect by the flesh. To 
the Philippians, the Apostle speaks of those who 
were the enemies of the cross of Christ, minding 
earthly things ; and the Colossians seem to have 



54 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

had the leaven of a return to the rudiments of the 
world among them. 

A special admonition seems, however, to have 
been given to the Ephesian church, which, more 
than any other, appears to have been living in resur- 
rection-power. " Put on the whole armor of 
God," urges the Apostle, " that ye may be able to 
stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle 
not against flesh and blood, but against .... wicked 
spirits (see margin) in heavenly places." The con- 
test now is not so much through the appetites, in 
the wilderness scene, as on the other side of Jordan 
for the possession of the heavenly places of rest. 
Now, indeed, the whole armor of God is needed. 
The omission of a single piece is dangerous. The 
argument is that because the contest is transferred 
to advance ground, therefore we require for vic- 
tory all that God has given us. Yet we were not 
so safe when, with only wilderness preparations, we 
met the Amalek enemies, as now, when we have 
experienced that the whole armor of God is, indeed, 
ours, we have to encounter the Philistine in his 
more appalling manifestations. 



DANGERS. 55 

Conscious that God's truth, through the Word, 
is by faith girt about our loins ,• that not only an 
imputed but a consequently imparted righteousness 
through grace gives us the " answer of a good con- 
science," " void of offence ; " that we have our 
feet shod with the preparation of the gospel that 
brings God's peace into our souls ; knowing the 
shield of faith not only ought to y but actually 
does turn the fiery darts of that wicked one ; with 
realized present salvation for a helmet : and wield- 
ing a sword, the victorious power of which we have 
proved — we now find ourselves praying always in 
the Spirit; and, because w r e are so fully armed, 
watching with all perseverance. Here is, indeed, 
danger ; but here is victory too. I have passed 
ten days at a time in a conflict with Satan, so actual 
as to remind me of Luther's vivid description of 
his contest in the castle — a conflict not of any 
temptations through the senses, but for retaining 
actual possession of my heavenly possession beyond 
Jordan, in resurrection-life and victory. No one 
who has been through such conflicts will speak 
lightly of them, nor of the danger, when they are 



56 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

over, of resting in the memory of victory, instead 
oT in Christ alone. Continual practice with the 
poor, weak human heart, since the days of Adam, 
has not been in vain in teaching Satan the suited 
temptation to each soul. The danger is real and 
actual, though the scene may be removed far off 
from the old scenes of wilderness defeat, but nc 
less real and actual is the victory of faith. 

The duty of confessing Christ in all things which 
He bestows upon us, seems to be essentially con- 
nected with retaining His blessings, whether of the 
knowledge of the forgiveness of sins, or of that 
inward cleansing from sin, which is essentially 
included in the term u salvation." The special 
and marked blessing of God is on the confession ; 
but yet like other blessings which lie hard by con- 
cealed dangers, the wily enemy of our souls 
would turn,^were it possible, the confession of 
what we find Christ made unto us (1 Cor. i. 30) 
into a profession of what we in ourselves are. 
As in a moment the righteousness of the saint 
may be turned to filthy rags, and even pollution 
itself. 



DAGGERS. 57 

We know how instantly a soul is turned to dark- 
ness and doubt, which for one moment lets in the 
devil's suggestion that forgiveness of sins is partly 
of works, and the remainder of faith ; even though, 
Simon Stylites-like, there be the most abject con- 
fession of unworthiness along with the claim of 
merit for unexampled, self-inflicted penance. " Sal- 
vation is of the Lord," wholly and exclusively of 
the Lord ; nor will He in any point share its glory 
with any human being. As His enemies hated 
Christ without any cause existing in the blessed 
One, so God saved us without any cause or merit 
existing in ourselves. When there was nothing in 
us, or in our ways, that God could approve, then 
He loved us freely, and created in us that which 
was of His own holiness, and which alone He could 
love. It is those who are the most confident of the 
remission of their sins through shedding of blood, 
who are most emphatic in their testimony to pure 
grace. The danger comes in with the temptation 
to assume to self part of the work of redemption. 

The parallel is wonderfully accurate in the work 
of effectual inward cleansing which ought always 



58 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

to follow the forgiveness of sins. Instantly that 
there finds lodgment in the soul the faintest thought 
of self-merit, to just that extent the fearful warning 
of Mai. ii. is found true. " If ye will not hear, if 
ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to My 
name, saith the Lord of hosts, 1 will even send a 
curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings ; 
yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not 
lay it to heart." Awful words of warning ! May 
we lay them to heart while" yet we believe unto 
righteousness — imparted as well as imputed right- 
eousness — and confess unto a full salvation, ex- 
claiming, " Come and hear, all ye that fear God, 
and I will declare what He hath done for my soul." 
Thus, as in the forgiveness of sins, while knowing 
results in our own souls of Christ's death and 
resurrection, he that glorieth shall glory in the 
Lord alone, and such an one may be led like Paul 
to say, €l I have, therefore, whereof I may glory 
through Jesus Christ," or, " Ye are my witnesses, 
and God also, how holily and justly and un- 
blamably we behaved ourselves among you that 
believe." 



DANGERS. 59 

After long and intimate intercourse with many 
who claim most for the triumphs of Christ in 
setting up His kingdom in their hearts, it is my 
matured conviction that there are none who are so 
truly humble and distrustful of self, and who so 
unfeignedly give God all the glory of His work, — 
none who are pvacticallij so free from legalism ; 
— and this even in cases where their educational 
statements of doctrine differ from the language to 
God of their hearts in prayer or praise. As the 
acknowledgment of confidence in Christ for the 
forgiveness of sins, which once seemed to us self- 
exaltation, produced the only true humility when 
we ourselves entered upon it: just so true humility 
and safety is in the confession of what God has 
done for our souls in sanctification. 

One of the dangers of this " highway" is, that 
having found the practical righteousness which 
comes by faith, and realizing how much it is 
beyond all former experience, the heart's confi- 
dence may be almost unconsciously shifted from a 
dependence on Christ to confidence in its own 
condition or attainment, even though it was at 



GO WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

first received as a free gift. With such a change, 
the communication with the root is severed ; and 
although the branch may for a time appear un- 
changed, it must sooner or later be cut off, if not 
restored. Christ must be the soul's perpetual 
centre. If He be not our centre, self will take His 
place, and each precious gift will be turned into a 
curse, until, like Nebuchadnezzar, loss of under- 
standing is the result. We are called to glory, not 
by self-glorying, but by glorifying God in our 
bodies and our spirits, which are God's. To the 
question, " What is the most dangerous doctrine ? " 
a saint replied most truly, "God's truth held car- 
nally and to exalt self" There is no fall such as 
that from the height of a full communion with God 
to that depth of sin, robbing Christ of His glory in 
saving and sanctifying the soul. Our prayer should 
be, V Show me, O Lord, the very first approaches 
of evil ! " The heart enlightened by the Spirit, 
and exercised by use to discern between good and 
evil, will, at the first moment of consciousness of 
temptation, fly to Jesus and cry, " Deliver me from 
the snare of the fowler ! " It will not pray uncer- 



DANGERS. 61 

tainly, but in that joyous confidence of victory 
which is always honored by God. 

There is danger everywhere while yet Satan 
is unchained, and there is danger of being so 
exclusively occupied with the superstructure, as for 
the time to lose sight of the only foundation which 
is laid — not that it is denied, but that it is not 
retained in its place. The mercy-seat must be kept 
continually in view. It is just here that many 
earnest seekers after holiness, through the dark and 
even later ages within the pale of the Romish 
Church, conspicuously failed. It is here that some 
most excellent people, exemplary in many respects 
in their personal walk, have also missed of their 
privileges and power. A walk in the light does 
not cleanse, neither the walk nor the light can 
cleanse, but a true walk in the light brings to the 
blood, and that cleanses, effectually cleanses, from 
all sin. 

It was not without purpose that the Holy Spirit 
placed between " the riches of the glory of his 
inheritance in the saints," in the first chapter, and 
the being " filled with all the fullness of God," in 



62 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

the third chapter of Ephesians, the humbling state- 
ments of the second chapter of our former death in 
trespasses and sins, when the living Spirit raised 
us up to " sit together in heavenly places in Christ 
Jesus." Nor was it without purpose that, in the 
midst of the high range of the revelations of this 
epistle, the Spirit should, in the limits of twenty- 
two words, emphasize in five statements, that sal- 
vation is " by grace," a through faith," " not of 
ourselves," " the gift of God," and " not of works." 
Were our lives on earth continued as many ages as 
we have seen days, our testimony would be to the 
blood for the forgiveness of the past, and the blood 
for present inward cleansing. Nor is the blood 
needful only to wash away defilement ; it prevents 
defilement. The pebble by the roadside is often 
soiled, and the rain from heaven often again washes 
it ; but if it be placed beneath the sparkling stream, 
it does not contract the defilement. So by faith 

" We every moment have 
The merit of His blood." 

It would not be a true consecration to the priest- 
hood were the blood omitted in its order — -first the 



DANGERS. 63 

blood, then the oil. God's order is the blood for 
pardon, the Spirit to enlighten ; the blood for 
cleansing, the Spirit to fill the purified temple of 
the living God. 

We therefore solemnly warn any who believe 
that they are walking in the highway of holiness, 
that Satan has the power of transforming himself 
into an angel of light. The Romish superstition 
as to his fleeing at the sign of the cross, like many 
of their other fictions, has a foundation in truth ; 
for whenever the Christian, whatever his advance, 
finds himself coming continually to the cross, liv- 
ing in sight of Calvary, while yet also risen with 
Christ in a life of resurrection-power, he may know 
that, while living thus, he cannot go astray. The 
cross separates from self-righteousness as effectually 
as from sins and sinning. All errorists, we are sure, 
have, either in doctrine outwardly, or in experience 
inwardly, lost sight of Calvary before yielding 
themselves to the guidance of Satan. It is just 
here, in the constant reference to the atonement, 
that we look for the safety of that large class, in all 
denominations of Christians, who are seeking or 



64 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

enjoying what is practically included in the expres- 
sions, "dead indeed unto sin/' " risen with Christ," 
and "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all 
sin." 

Christ, then, is our Gibraltar. In Him we are 
safe ; out of Him we are weaker than other men. 
No shafts can penetrate within our rock and strong 
tower. Should we be pierced, it would be because 
of not abiding in Christ. God be praised that we 
find in Christ sufficient provision for our safety and 
victory. Let us see to it that by prayer and faith 
we avail ourselves of it, not sometimes, but always. 



CHAPTER V. 

HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 

WHEN God in His great mercy towards His 
saints has made His own clear, searching 
light to shine down into the remotest corners of 
their hearts, revealing the remnants of old evils, 
which, though restrained in expression or action, 
still inhere within the soul, He not only cleanses 
with the blood what the light has made manifest, 
but He also forms holy habits of soul. 

It is a great grace to be restrained from sin, but 
it is a greater to find that word accomplished in 
our inmost being, " I will consume thy filthiness 
out of thee." Truly our God is a consuming fire 
to those who will come to Him to receive the ful-* 
fillment of the promise, " I will turn My hand upon 
thee, and purely purge away thy dross." Yet His 
work does not end with this emptying, cleansing 

process. The cleansed temple is the dwelling of 
(65) 



66 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

the living God, who dwells and walks in it, and 
by His presence brings in the divine harmony of 
being, in which He does, indeed, work in us " both 
to will and to do of His good pleasure." In the 
centre of our existence the cross currents have 
been stayed, and the peace of our inward life 
flows on " like a river." But there are old habits, 
the powerful law of accustomed successions of 
thought, to be changed, and the power of habit is 
to be brought to bear on the new life of sanctifica- 
tion now opened before the soul, as powerfully as 
it once bore upon the life of habitual failure. Let 
us see in what way this law of our being, which 
we call habit, can be made the channel of blessing 
in the new life. 

I. LIVING OUT OF SIGHT OF SIN. 

There is often found a habit of looking ^t sin, 
at the probability of its return, and at its mani- 
festation in sinning, — when the soul should be 
occupied with Christ, and the things that are true, 
honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. 
The apostle in this connection admonishes us, " If 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 67 

there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
think on these things" not occupying the soul in 
any way about the things that are untrue, impure, 
and unjovely. 

Let " so many of us " as have been baptized 
into the death of Jesus Christ, and as have " risen 
with Christ," in an actual newness of life, see to it 
that we habitually live in the atmosphere of the 
kingdom, which is righteousness, peace, and joy 
in the Holy Ghost. Then, if we are compelled 
to deal with sin in the world or the church, we 
shall do it as those to whom, themselves pure, " all 
things are pure," or undenting. Reckoning our- 
selves " to be dead indeed unto sin," but " alive 
unto righteousness," we must accustom ourselves 
to habitually " follow after the things that make 
for peace, and things whereby we may edify one 
another." The occupation of the mind with sin 
is the first step towards its commission, but our 
Father, in His mercy, would have us so entirely 
delivered from the power of darkness, and so con- 
sciously and wholly translated into the kingdom of 
His dear Son, that the things suitable for the king- 



68 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

dom should exclusively occupy our souls, and 
that the things belonging to the power of darkness 
should be out of sight, so much as is possible in 
this scene of conflict. 

Well do I remember the joyous rest which 
spread through my soul when, long after I had 
learned the lesson of practical resurrection, I first 
found it my privilege to form the holy habit of 
living, if I may so say, out of sight of sin, with 
my whole soul occupied with the things of God. 
It was the dwelling in love and dwelling in God, 
in an atmosphere far above the malarious breath of 
sin, which had been too much present in my 
thoughts when, " as though living in the world," 
I occupied my mind with sin or its results. The 
veil now seemed drawn over the past, and my life 
became a succession of .henceforths, as I looked 
forward without any expectation of sinning 
again. This made me very watchful and tender, 
and though I am not able to say that there has 
been no trespass since, I can say that never have I 
lived so near to Christ with so little for which my 
heart condemned me ; never with such confidence 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 69 

towards God ; never with such soul-union with 
Jesus; never with such a realization of being 
seated with Christ in heavenly places. The yield- 
ing up of the habit of contemplating sin, or of 
expecting ourselves to sin, is a great step towards " 
preservation from it ; and the new habit of expect- 
ing Christ to safely keep us, is a wonderful strength 
to the soul. Nor can it be called presumption for 
us to be expecting and trusting Jesus to save us, 
moment by moment, from sinning. " Thou shalt 
call His name Jesus, for He shall save His peo- 
ple from their sins." 

II. TRUSTING FOR EVERYTHING. 

Faith in Christ for any particular blessing which 
commences by an effort, at times a severe one, 
becomes by continuance a holy habit of soul. 
After suspended life, the first breaths drawn are a 
succession of painful efforts, but as full life is 
restored, breathing becomes a habit, almost uncon- 
sciously continued through the whole existence. 
Just in the same manner, soul-sickness, with the 
consequent sinning, is the temporary suspension of 



70 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

resurrection life in the believer's soul. Restora- 
tion is an effort, a gasping to get the breath of 
heaven again within the being ; but after the res- 
toration, comes the holy habit almost unconscious 
of effort, of inhaling the pure air of the kingdom 
into which we are translated. 

Trusting Christ for each privilege which the 
Holy Spirit successively opens before us in the 
Word, becomes the holy habit of the soul, so that 
as soon as any grace or new victory is set before 
us. the soul instinctively, and as a matter of course, 
casts itself upon Christ for its accomplishment. 

Soon after my conversion I one day expressed 
my hopelessness of ever being such a Christian as 
Adelaide Newton, — that such a life was " not for 
me." " Not for you ! " exclaimed a friend present. 
" Not for you ! you may think yourself a very 
small vessel, but are you full ? " The admoni- 
tion sunk into my very soul, and there and then I 
asked God for grace that I might never again look 
upon any privilege designed for all, and which any 
other Christian had, as though it were " not for 
me." By the grace of God, for the fifteen years 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 71 

that have since passed, I do not remember to 
have discerned any gospel blessing offered to all 
God's children, and possessed by any one, without 
being upon my knees about it till by faith I ob- 
tained it. It became a holy habit to expect to 
receive from God as much as any other of His 
children. When the more full privileges of the 
gospel sanctification dawned upon my soul nearly 
ten years alter my conversion, I did not say, " Not 
for me ; " but, in the very first moment of my 
apprehension of them, since " all the promises of 
God in Him are yea and in Him amen, unto the 
glory of God by us," they are mine. 

With gratitude I remember in the " way of ho- 
liness," which God opened before me, how gently 
He taught me the habit of trusting Christ for 
everything. At first it was a mighty effort to 
leave all to Him. In the important emergencies 
of life, self would seek to assert itself at first, and 
it was subdued at times only after a violent strug- 
gle. But in this blessed school of God, I have 
learned simply and naturally, as the helpless child 
clings to the parent, without first trying its own 



72 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

strength, so simply, — without previous self-effort 
and failure, — habitually to trust Jesus in every- 
thing. It would now seem to me strange to have 
an anxious care upon any subject whatever. I 
have learned to be very bold in asking for great 
things ; but when I have asked my largest, I con- 
tinually find my Father in heaven doing " exceed- 
ing abundantly above all that we ask or think." 

III. IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE. 

When believers tamper with temptation or sin, 
they scarcely know what they are doing. Not only 
is the dreadful nature of every act of disobedience 
in one who has been redeemed by blood and placed 
in the family of God to be considered, but the 
fatal results of breaking in upon a holy habit of 
obedience. Oh that I could reach every child of 
God, and most especially those who have entered 
upon this full soul-union with Jesus, to implore 
them to yield implicit obedience to every motion 
of the Spirit of God ; to beseech them to do this 
unhesitatingly, instantly; to beg them to form the 
holy habit of perfect, unlimited obedience ! God 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 73 

is so regardful of His own glory, and of our high- 
est happiness, that He will not manifest Himself 
fully to any but to those who give Him their whole 
undivided heart, with the resulting entire obedi- 
ence. Now every act, however small, of disobedi- 
ence, opens the door for another sin ; and every 
day of entire consecration gives, with all the past, 
accumulative force to the future in causing our being 
to gravitate towards God. There is one man who, 
more than any I have ever met, has for years 
seemed to me permeated in every emotion, action, 
and thought, by the presence and power of God. 
He imparted to me, lately, one secret of his power, 
"when he said that a few days more would make 
twenty-one years that, his obedience had been 
kept at the extreme verge of his light. Truly, 
such a sample of holy spiritual manhood, and dis- 
creet, unvarying sanctified energy in God's service, 
may well make some of us feel our needs ; not, 
however, that we should despair, 'as though it were 
" not for me," but that it may lead us to claim like - 
precious faith, as God's answer to believing prayer 
and consecration. 



T4 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

As to my own personal experience, I have 
nothing to glory in save Christ my Lord : but this 
I may say, that after years of too much vacillation 
in obedience, He set before me, not in the thunders 
of Sinai, but in the gently constraining power of 
the Cross, a path of habitual obedience, which 
through death and resurrection I have found a 
possible one ; and I love to say that I do find the 
now unresisted yoke easy, and the cherished bur- 
den light. The Holy Spirit is described in imagery 
expressing gentleness — the gentle dew, the tender 
dove, — and I have such a dread of grieving so 
gentle a monitor, that it keeps me walking softly 
before God. A hasty word, the entering upon the 
spirit of the world, the rein for a moment given to 
the imagination or appetites, how easily these 
things grieve the indwelling Spirit! But narrow 
as is the highway of holiness, God has provided in 
Jesus ample means for our walk in it ; is it pre- 
sumption to trust Jesus to keep me within its 
limits ? I pray you, beloved Christian, to form the 
holy habit of walking in the middle of this high- 
way, — as far as possible from its edges; — much 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. <5 

more committing yourself in every conscious mo- 
ment to Jesus to keep you out of the ditches that 
lie on either side of the way. 

IV. PRAYER AND SUPPLICATION WITH THANKS- 
GIVING. 

The holy habits of prayer and of thanksgiving 
should not be separated. The Apostle tells us : 
"in everything, by prayer and supplication, with 
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known 
unto God ; and the peace of God which passeth all 
understanding shall keep your hearts and minds, 
through Christ Jesus." This peace of God may 
be compared to a bird of the heavens, having for 
its two wings prayer and thanksgiving. If either 
fail, there is but one wing, and the bird must sink. 
But if to the believing prayers for new mercies on 
the one side, there be habitually joined the grateful 
thanksgiving on the other, we u shall mount up 
with wings as eagles," and live in the regions of 
eternal sunshine, far above the malarious damps of 
earth. 

Most Christians know something of this as an 



76 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

occasional experience, but how shall it become a 
holy habit of the soul ? The question brings us 
again to the point of that death to sin, and life unto 
righteousness, to which the sin-bearing of our Lord 
calls t us. So long as the body of sin is not u de- 
stroyed/' so long as the faith which has grasped 
the pardon of sins stumbles at the inward cleansing 
from all sin, so long is continuous prayer and 
thanksgiving impossible. The dead weight of the 
yet uncrucified carnal nature, however it may be 
for the time overcome, under influences of unusual 
power, must sooner or later cause the soul again 
to gravitate tow T ard the earth. 

We would encourage those Christians who have 
realized the wonderful baptism into the death of 
Christ, the crucifixion of the old man, with the 
consequent resurrection with Christ, to walk in 
newness of life, to "continue in prayer and watch 
in the same with thanksgiving," — to seek patiently 
and perseveringly from the " Giver of every good 
and perfect gift," this soul-attitude of continually 
and instinctively turning toward God, which is 
expressed by praying without ceasing, and in 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 77 

everything giving thanks ; — to seek it with the 
whole heart, and to so seek it in faith as to 
find it. 

In God's dealing with my own soul, He long 
since taught me to set before my heart as an object 
of particular desire some single, but as yet unat- 
tained, grace at a time, the need of which I felt 
presented to me in the Word. I must wait upon 
God for this, meanwhile watching against every 
temptation to failure. Sometimes my faith and 
patience have been tried, but the end of perse- 
vering faith is sure. Often, like the gentle dew, 
there has stolen over my heart the realization that 
my prayer has been answered, and my soul has, 
almost unconsciously as to the process, found itself 
exercising the habit for which it has been praying. 
Thus praise has become the natural expression of 
the heart, and the giving vent to the feelings in 
exclamations or songs not a little contributes to the 
holy habit of praise. Prayer is now not so much 
the effort as the attitude of the soul. I speak not 
as having realized all that I am claiming of God in 
these respects, but I may say that I know some- 



78 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

thing of God's grace and power within my soul in 
these holy habits bestowed in answer to prayer and 
faith. 

So gently, so sweetly does our Elder Brother, 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities, deal with 
His little children who put their whole trust in 
Him ! " A thankful heart is a receiving heart." 

V. WITNESSING FOR CHRIST. 

Who can over-estimate the importance of having 
the witnessing for Christ to become a holy, con- 
tinuous habit of the Christian ? Some believers 
seem to lose no opportunity, day or night, of speak- 
ing to sinners, and they seem to win more thus by 
private labor than most whose opportunity for pub- 
lic preaching is large. Their life flows like a cur- 
rent, easily and naturally, in this channel. God 
vouchsafes a double portion of the Spirit's guid- 
ance and power to those who thus zealously and 
faithfully occupy His gifts. There is the gift, and 
there is the increase. There is the strength, and 
there is its growth by exercise. 

I know men in the humbler walks of life, who 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 79 

would, perhaps, not be acceptable in many pulpits, 
yet who, in this quiet way, from house to house, 
gather hundreds of souls every passing year. Few 
know of it, for the approval of Jesus satisfies their 
hearts. I have learned many a lesson of such. 
Once I had taken a house in a village, for the pur- 
pose of having the gospel preached in a large tent 
to those who would not attend church ; but with 
all the public services, I had never spoken to the 
person in the house next my own. A plain brother, 
who once came to the meeting, and lodged with 
me, got up about sunrise, and went to my neighbor 
in the early morning, as he cultivated his garden, 
and did what I had never done in the weeks that I 
had been there — warned him of his peril, and in- 
vited him to come to Christ. The same individual 
makes it a rule at funerals uniformly to select an un- 
converted person to accompany to the ground, that 
he may preach the gospel to him. Witnessing for 
Christ in the consciences of all men had become the 
holy habit of his life ; not a mechanical effort, but 
a gift diligently improved and exercised in the 
power of God. 



80 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

The Lord would have those of His servants who 
have received the largest gifts to be the most dili- 
gent and constant laborers for Him. With the gift 
of righteousness, the cleansed heart, and the in- 
dwelling God/ there comes the responsibility of 
being continuously co-workers with God ; not the 
spasmodic effort of feebleness, but the firm, sound 
step of spiritual health and power. It is not now 
hard for the mouth to speak out of the abundance 
which the heart possesses, and yet it is, neverthe- 
less, important to form the holy habit of spealung, 
and especially to be saying, " Come and hear, all 
ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath 
done for my soul." With this habit of speaking of 
God's grace to our own souls comes an increase of 
power, and in experience it will be found that 
nothing so raises the longings of feeble Christians 
for full resurrection-life, as the telling of what 
Christ has done for our own souls. 

In my own case, this speaking of my inner life 
to others, is the reversing of a life-long education 
of literally, so far as I can recall, entire silence, 
even towards those nearest to me in the ties of 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 81 

nature and of grace. I do not remember, in ten 
years of earnest Christian life, to have once spoken 
of my personal experience ; indeed, it often would 
not bear speaking of to any one but my compassion- 
ate, forgiving Saviour ! But when it pleased God 
to fill my soul with His salvation, I was compelled 
to break the ice of a lifetime habit of silence, and 
to form the new habit of speaking of what Christ 
had done for my own soul. Much as I shrunk at 
times from it, a careful study of the Word forced 
upon me the conviction that the great Apostle to the 
Gentiles had shown me the pattern, that it was by 
this means that I must reach the souls of sinner and 
of saint. From the samples of the addresses of Paul 
before the unconverted,.we may infer that on almost 
every occasion he opened his ministry to sinners 
with the relation of how God had converted his 
own soul. And from the Epistles we may gather 
that when he had stated a doctrine, it was his 
custom to illustrate it by his own experience. 
For example, when he reproves and warns the 
Galatians, he opens his own heart, and tells them, 
" I do not frustrate the grace of God ; " and then 



82 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

uncovering the veil of his inner consciousness, he 
shows them the secret springs of his own life in the 
words, " Not I, bat Christ liveth in me; and the 
life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the 
faith of the Son of God."* 

Two marked illustrations of the power of this 
personal testimony have occurred within a few days. 
In one case a prominent and zealous preacher had 
lived in the power of resurrection-life for a season, 

* Matthew Henry, the Commentator, says, " What God 
has wrought in our souls, as well as for them, we must 
declare to others. * * * God's people should communicate 
their experiences to teach others ; we should take all occa- 
sions to tell how great and kind things God hath done for 
us, especially our souls, the spiritual blessings ; and these 
we should be most affected with ourselves, and with these 
we should endeavor to affect others." 

The Commentator, Dr. Scott, says: "Every servant of 
God is a witness for Him ; and they all can give such an 
account of what He has wrought in them, shown to them 
and done for them, as to lead others to know, believe and 
understand His power, truth and love. * * * I likewise 
learned the use of experience in preaching, and was con- 
vinced that the readiest way to reach the hearts and con- 
sciences cf others, was to speak from my own." 

Bishop Latimer, the martyr, said of Bilney's experience, 
"I learned more by this confession than by much reading, 
and in many years." 



HOLY HABITS OF SOUL. 83 

but through unwillingness to confess what God had 
done for him, he had failed from the full steadfast- 
ness of a walk in Christ. To his arguments against 
our speaking of our inner experience, I simply 
replied, " What most effectually reached your own 
soul, to lead you to full sanctification ? Was it 
the doctrine and arguments, or my confession 
in Scripture terms of what God had wrought 
in my own soul ? " "I see it. I am all wrong," 
was the frank reply. "It was your personal expe- 
rience that reached my heart. I am now ready to 
acknowledge all that Christ shall do for me." 

Again : I had been holding in the farmhouses 
near my summer home a series of meetings for 
some weeks, but without anv manifested results in 
conversion. There was deep interest, the attend- 
ance was good, but no souls acknowledged being 
saved. After a time I was led by the Spirit to 
tell at the close of the address what God had 
done for my own soul. That night there was 
one clear conversion, and at the next meeting 
there were eight or ten who made a satisfactory 
confession of having been saved during or immedi- 



84 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

ately after the meeting. I trace this remarkable 
work in a company of only about forty persons to 
the power of God accompanying the personal con- 
fession of past and present grace to one of His little 
ones. 

It is when the preacher comes to the point, like 
Paul, of telling of God's dealings with his own soul, 
that all eyes and hearts are fixed upon him, and a 
personal interest is awakened beyond that of any 
previous portion of his address. As is well known, 
successful evangelists find their own personal narra- 
tive of the grace of God to themselves, the most 
effective arrow in reaching the hearts of the King's 
enemies. I know no reason why the relation of 
God's further dealings with our souls should not 
be found as effective towards the friends of Christ 
in promoting the setting up of God's kingdom in its 
full power within their souls. When the glory of 
His work is given to Christ, I cannot see that the 
one narrative savors any more of presumption than 
the other. 

It is not without prayer and careful search- 
ing of the Word of God that, from time to time, 



HOLT HABITS OF SOUL. 85 

allusions to personal experience have been made 
in print, and I have reason to suppose that no 
portions of the published papers on Christian 
Sanctification have so reached the hearts of saints, 
as the personal confessions. It is with deep and 
matured convictions that I now press upon my 
brethren the habit of personally relating, under 
proper circumstances, God's gracious dealings with 
their souls. The abuse of such a practice must not 
deter us from its use, any more than in a hundred 
other cases of perversion that might be named. 
Satan, who knows the power of such testimony, 
would raise a thousand objections, to which we 
have one sufficient reply, — the example of the saints 
in all ages, guided by the Spirit, as related in the 
Word of God. 

Our Lord Himself — our pattern in this as in all 
else, — has condescended to open out His heart to 
us in the Psalms ; and in this He has been followed 
by the prophets and apostles, men " subject to like 
passions as we are," in many a heart-searching 
lesson which could not have been so effectively 
taught otherwise. 



00 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

" Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will 
declare what He hath done for my soul." "The 
Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we 
are glad." "Ye are my witnesses, and God also, 
how holily, and justly, and unblamably we be- 
haved ourselves among you that believe." "For 
our rejoicing is this: the testimony of our con- 
science, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not 
with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we 
have had our conversation in the world, and more 
abundantly to you-ward." " For to me to live is 
Christ." " God, whom I serve from my forefathers 
with a pure conscience." " I am crucified with 
Christ ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liv- 
eth in me ; and the life which I now live in the flesh, 

1 live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, 
and gave Himself for me. I do not frustrate. the 
grace of God." May the Lord increase this holy 
habit of witnessing of His grace ! Though some 
may misunderstand us, " The humble shall hear 
thereof and be glad." Many shall be roused to 
know the fullness of grace when we testify, " Thou 
hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from 
tears, and my feet from falling" 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE'CHRISTIAN'S shout. 

THERE is a scene in the history of the chil- 
dren of Israel, revealing in type one of those 
precious secrets of the Lord, which are progressively 
made known to them that love Him. And perhaps 
there is no revelation made to the soul, after it has 
entered upon the life of faith, that is more practi- 
cally valuable than this. For it is a secret in 
reference to Christian warfare, which, when it is 
discovered, makes this warfare a long triumphal 
progress. 

This scene occurs when the children of Israel 
were brought before Jericho, one of those " cities 
great, and walled up to heaven," which had so 
discouraged the hearts of the spies forty years 
before. Now upon their entrance at last into their 
promised land of rest, the first difficulty which 

meets them is this mighty city, opposing their 
(S7) 



88 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

onward progress. Well might their hearts be 
appalled at the sight of it. But the Lord said 
unto Joshua, " See, I have given into thine hand 
Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men 
of valor." And then, after a few words as to 
their order of march, and the trumpets of testi- 
mony, He closes with these strange words : " All 
the people shall shout with a great shout ; and the 
wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people 
shall ascend up, every man straight before him." 
Strange, yet true, for so it was. On the seventh 
day, " Joshua said unto the people, Shout, for the 
Lord hath given you the city." So the people 
shouted wHen the priests blew with the trumpets. 
" And it came to pass, when the people heard the 
sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with 
a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that 
the people went up into the city, every man straight 
before him, and they took the city" 

Now no one can suppose for a moment, that 
this shout caused the walls to fall. And yet the 
secret of their victory lay in just this shout. \ For 
it was the shout of a faith which dared to claim a 






the christian's shodt. 89 

promised victory, on the authority of God's word 
alone, while as yet there were no signs of this 
victory being accomplished. And according to 
their faith, God did unto them ; so that when they 
shouted, He made the walls to fall. 

God had declared that He had given them the 
city, and faith reckoned this to be true. Unbelief 
might well have said, " It would be better not to 
shout until the walls do actually fall, for should 
there be anv failure about it the men of Jericho 
will triumph, and we shall bring dishonor on the 
name of our God." But faith laughed at all such 
prudential considerations, and, confidently resting 
on God's word, gave a shout of victory, while yet 
to the eye of sense that victory seemed impossible. 
And long centuries afterward the Holy Ghost thus 
records this triumph of faith in Hebrews xi. 30. 
" By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after 
they were compassed about seven days." 

Jehoshaphat is another example of this sort of 
faith. In 2 Chron. xx. 2, we read that it was 
told him, that a " great multitude " had come up 
against him. He spread the case before the Lord, 



90 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

and received as an answer the wonderful promise, 
" Ye shall not need to fight in this battle ; set 
yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of 
the Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem ; fear 
not, nor be dismayed ; to-morrow, go out against 
them, for the Lord will be with you." Jehosha- 
phat believed what God said, and he and his peo- 
ple marched out to meet their enemy, as confident 
of victory, as though they had seen that victory 
already accomplished before their eyes ; so that 
they even appointed singers to praise the Lord, and 
to sing the song of victory as they went out to 
meet their foe. And we read that " When they 
began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambush- 
ments against the enemy, and they were smitten." 
And when the children of Israel came near them, 
"they looked unto the multitude, and, behold, 
they were dead bodies fallen to the earth, and 
none escaped." "More than conquerors," truly, 
"they were three days in gathering the spoil, it 
was so much." 

The principle of warfare, typified to us in these 
beautiful scenes, is that declared in 1 John v. 4 : 



THE CHRISTIAN'S SHOUT. 91 

M And this is the victory that overcometh the world, 
even our faith." It is a mcde of warfare incompre- 
hensible to the natural man ; a mystery even to 
the Christian whose faith has not advanced beyond 
the failing experience of the Seventh of Romans ; 
but radiant with the light of the Holy Spirit to 
every soul that has entered upon the life hid with 
Christ in God. Such, and such only, can under- 
stand the full meaning of the words of our Lord, 
when He said : " Be of good cheer, for I have over- 
come the world." They read in them the secret 
of an already conquered foe ; and they can go out 
to meet their enemies, claiming the victory before 
the battle has even begun, so that they become in 
very truth, " More than conquerors, through Him 
that loved us." 

We must observe that Joshua did not say : 
"Shout, for the Lord will give you the city," but 
shout, for He " hath given " it. And neither does 
our Lord say : " Be of good cheer ; I icill over- 
come the world ; " but " I have overcome " it. 
There is a mighty difference between these two ; as 
great a difference as there is between meeting an 



92 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

army all in battle array, and meeting one routed 
and demoralized by an acknowledged defeat. It 
is well known that as long as an army can keep 
secret the fact of its being conquered from its con- 
querors, it can still make some show of resistance ; 
but the moment it becomes conscious that its defeat 
is known, it loses all heart, becomes utterly de- 
moralized, and has no resort left but to flee. 

The secret then lies in this, — to meet our enemy 
as an already conquered foe, and not as one who 
has yet to be conquered. And it is the one secret 
above all others which Satan seeks to hide from the 
church, and in which he has only too well suc- 
ceeded. A dear Christian, who had been fearfully 
beset by temptation, and had found a complete vic- 
tory impossible, was told this secret by another to 
whom it had been revealed. Her soul rejoiced in 
the discovery, and she said afterwards it seemed to 
her at once as though she could almost hear Satan, 
as he slunk away, exclaiming : " There, she has 
found out my secret ! She knows now that I am 
an already conquered foe ; and I shall never have 
any more victories over her again." 



THE christian's shout. 93 

Surely, it is true that Jesus has fought our 
enemy and has overcome him. And if our faith 
will only reckon him to be overcome, and will dare 
to raise the shout of victory, when it comes in sight 
of any foe, we shall surely find, as the Israelites 
did, that every wall will fall down flat, and that a 
pathway will be opened up straight before us to 
take the city ! 

And now a few practical words as to how to do 
this. Our usual way of meeting temptation has 
been, perhaps, with a cry for help. We have said 
over and over : " Oh Lord, save me ! Oh Lord, 
save me ! " Let us meet it hereafter with a shout 
of victory, instead. Let us say by faith, He does 
save me. The walls may look as high and as 
immovable as ever; and prudence may say, it is 
not safe to shout until the victory is actually won. 
But the faith that can shout in the midst of the 
sorest stress of temptation : " Jesus saves me, He 
saves me now ! " such a faith will be sure to win a 
glorious and a speedy victory. I have tried this 
often. Temptations have come in like a flood. 
Temptations to irritability, or to wicked thoughts, 



94 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

or to bitterness of spirit, or a thousand other things. 
I have felt my danger of sinning, and my fears 
and my consciousness have said to me, Jesus will 
not save at all. But my faith claims continually, 
" Jesus saves me — saves me now ! " and the sal- 
vation is glorious. Sometimes it seems so untrue 
that Jesus can save me, that I have to say aloud, 
He does saye, forcing my lips to utter it over 
and over, shutting my eyes and closing my ears 
against every suggestion of the devil to doubt. 
But, untrue as it may seem at first, I always find 
that according to my faith it is unto me, and that 
when I shout, the Lord never fails to give me the 
victory. 

A Christian car-man, of a naturally harsh tem- 
per, had entered upon this life of faith, but was 
sorely beset with temptations when about his daily 
work among his ungodly companions. He stopped 
one morning on his way down to his stand, at the 
house of the minister who had led him into this 
rest, in order to ask him how he could best meet 
and conquer them. After explaining to the minis- 
ter the suddenness of the temptations, and the want 



THE CHRISTIAN'S SHOUT. 95 

of time even to pray for help against them, the car- 
man said : " Now can you tell me of any short 
road to victory, that I can lay hold of, just at the 
needed moment ? " " Yes," replied the minister, 
" when the temptation comes, do not stop to pray 
for help, but, instead, by faith claim at once the 
promised victory, and Satan will instantly flee." 

The car-man went on his way to his daily work. 
As usual, he was met by the taunts and sneers of 
his fellow workmen ; and he soon found that they 
had jostled him out of his rightful place in the 
ranks, and had pushed him back to the end of the 
train of cars. The temptation to anger was very 
great, but folding his arms he said at once : " The 
blood of Jesus cleanseth me ! " and his heart was 
filled with perfect peace and content. Again he 
was tried ; a heavy box was so rolled as to fall on 
his foot and badly hurt him. And again he folded 
his arms and repeated his shout of victory, and at 
once all was calm. And so the day passed on. 
Trials and temptations abounded, but his triumphal 
shout carried him safely through them all, and the 
fiery darts of the enemy were all quenched by the 



96 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

shield of faith which he continually lifted up. 
Night-time found him more than conqueror through 
Him who loved-him, and his fellow car-men were 
forced to own the reality and the beauty of a 
religion that could so triumph over their aggravat- 
ing assaults. 

Dear Christian, try this. Go out to meet your 
enemy, singing a song of triumph as you go, and I 
can promise you, on the authority of God's own 
Word, that, according to your faith it shall be unto 
you. Meet your very next temptation in this way. 
At its first approach, begin to give thanks for the 
victory, and you will find such a triumph as you 
have heretofore scarcely dreamed could be. Thus 
shall life become a continual psalm of praise, as 
you sing : " Thou, Lord, hast made me glad 
through Thy work ; I will triumph in the work of 
Thy hands." 



CHAPTER VII. 

FAILURE . 

IN this life of faith, as we have repeatedly stated, 
there is no necessity for failure. We affirm 
that there are resources, available to the believer, 
in the cleansing blood, the sanctifying Word and 
the indwelling Spirit, ample to preserve us from all 
consciousness of transgression. We distinctly avow 
that we find that to " walk in the Spirit," to " dwell 
in love," and " in God," to know the Father and 
the Son making their " abode " with us, and to 
consciously realize God as dwelling and walking 
in us, just as so surely promised to us in the 
Scriptures, is not merely a distant hope, but a 
present reality. But we have never said that there 
was no more any possibility of our sinning. We 
have rather most earnestly warned, exhorted and 
urged all to see that they should continually abide 

in Christ, lest they should again be brought "into 
(97) 



98 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

captivity to that law of sin," from which they had 
through faith found deliverance. 

While, however, some who have commenced 
to " walk in the light," seem enabled to press on 
in one continuous and unvarying pathway of 
triumph, there are others whose experience is not 
always so unwavering. They have entered upon 
the highway of holiness, and they know that they 
are walking therein almost continuously, but in the 
earlier part of their course, nevertheless, now and 
then they are suddenly surprised into a momentary 
lapse, into some easily besetting sin. Then the 
question at once arises as to how this affects their 
experience, and what they are to do when it occurs. 
Stall they lose all heart to trust again to the keep- 
ing power of Christ ? Shall they turn back to the 
Christ-dishonoring experience of the past, crying 
" Who shall deliver me ? " and yet practically 
answer u no one," never again going to Jesus for a 
full deliverance ? Shall remembrance of their 
failure remain as a corroding canker in their 
breasts, destroying all hope of victory ? Because 
they have supposed that there is absolutely no 



FAILURE. 99 

failure in the lives of others who testify of the Rest 
of faith, shall they re-cross the Jordan to resume 
a wilderness experience of failure and defeat ? 

It is remarkable that right between* the two 
passages, which more absolutely than any others 
in all the Scripture, declare the inward cleansing 
of the believer st from all sin/' and " from all 
unrighteousness/' we find the warning against any 
claim to an inherent righteousness, any goodness 
in ourselves apart from the purifying blood of 
Christ, and the provision, in case of failure, for 
instantaneous pardon upon the confession of our 
sin. That is : after we, as the children cf God, 
have known divine fellowship in the light, and 
have been inwardly " cleansed from all sin," should 
so grievous an event occur as the revival of old 
evil in our hearts, with consequent trespass, the 

* The passage reads thus : — " But if we walk in the light, 
as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, 
and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from 
all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive our- 
selves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, 
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse 
us from all unrighteousness." 



100 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

same instant in which the soul becomes conscious 
of sin, should also witness its free and full con- 
fession. Simultaneously with the knowledge of 
trespass and its confession, the soul should also 
realize God is faithful to His promises iri having 
pardoned it, and even only just, because the pen- 
alty which Christ has borne for us "in His own 
body on the cross," is not to be endured a second 
time by ourselves. Nor does this blessed word of 
promise stop here, but it carries the soul onward 
to the inward re-cleansing of the heart " from all 
unrighteousness," or from the internal taint, caused 
by a lapse of faith, from which the trespass pro- 
ceeded. Thus the same flash of consciousness 
shall realize the sin, — the confession, — the forgive- 
ness, — and the soul cleansing, all in the single 
instant of time. Need we point out how so 
instantaneous an use of God's provision for pardon 
and cleansing, will restore the soul at once to the 
keeping power of Christ ? Or need we recall to the 
memory of those who have learned to avail them- 
selves of this immediate resumption of heavenly 
privilege, how tender, trustful, and thenceforward 



FAILURE. 101 

victorious, restored faith and communion has made 
them ? 

To be practical, I will take an instance from my 
own experience. Many years since I had learned 
faith's secret of practical hourly victory over my 
enemies. Christ had become my shield, and I had 
learned to so place it between temptation and my 
soul, that to my own astonishment, and to the 
praise of Jesus, hour by hour and day by day I 
found overcoming where I had before found failure, 
and rest instead of a troubled condemning heart. 
I wondered at the victory and inward Sabbath of 
my soul, and, it may be, lost the fullness of the 
realization of how exclusively it was Christ's vic- 
tory and Sabbath, and not my own. One day a 
workman had disarranged all my plans and in- 
volved me in perplexity, and I found my naturally 
hasty temper ignited like a flash of powder. 
Instead of turning first to Christ, I stepped up to 
the workman, and, in a hasty tone, reproved him. 
In a moment came the consciousness that I had 
sinned. Two courses were then open before me. 
One was to allow the consciousness of sinning to 



102 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

keep me from the presence and smile of Jesus, and 
like a gangrene eat away my inward rest and com- 
munion, thus bringing gloom and consequent 
failure. The other, and the better way, was to 
let the very first moment in which I was aware 
that I had given way to anger, make me conscious 
also of its full confession and perfect pardon ; — 
and also conscious of inward cleansing from the 
evil from which the hasty word of sin came. 
This done, rest of soul was at once restored, and 
the circumstance instead of keeping me from the 
heart of Jesus, made me deeply humble and more 
conscious of my dependence upon Him. Instead 
of remaining afar off and therefore specially open 
to the wiles of Satan, I at once found my place 
again " in Christ " and in Him strengthened 
against the recurrence of the sin.* 

* It might be added that an immediate acknowledgment 
to this, as yet unconverted, workman of my hastiness of 
speech, seemed to make this circumstance to him a testimony 
to the power of Jesus in my own soul, rather than a 
stumbling block in his way; and I had the satisfaction, 
shortly afterward, of leading him to a public confession of 
Christ in a Presbyterian church. 



FAILURE. 103 

Men reverse God's plan from the first teaching 
of law to the sinner, to the latest instructions to 
the saint. " To be good is to be happy," should 
rather read, in the life of grace, " To be happy is 
to be good." That is, the soul which is joyful in 
Jesus, and which allows no cloud for a single 
hour to shut out the rays of the Sun of Righteous- 
ness from the heart, is strong to overcome and do 
or to suffer for Christ. Let us become in order to 
do, rather than do in order to become. God's 
first expression of love to the sinner is to make 
him joyful in the knowledge of forgiven sin, the 
joy of the Lord becoming the source of his new 
strength. Surely He acts in no less grace and love 
to the saint ! 

The Christian thus living is as a vessel heading 
directly toward the port. Even should a sudden 
cross wave throw it " on its beam-ends," it is 
instantly righted and keeps on its unchanged 
course. The polarized needle may indeed be for 
a moment deflected ; the deflecting cause removed 
it reverts at once to its normal pointing. He who 
has learned to trust in the power of Jesus to save 



104 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

him from sin, must give up the expectation of 
sinning. Should it occur, let it be a painful sur- 
prise, — not his expectation. He will surely find, 
as he walks thus in Christ, that even such occa- 
sional failures as we have alluded to, do fade out 
of his experience. Should sin occur, the soul flies 
instantly back to Jesus, and since his Heavenly 
Father has promised, " thy sins and thine iniquities 
I will remember no more," he feels it his priv- 
ilege also to forget them forever, and again know 
the reality of that promise, " The Lord upholdeth 
them that fall." 

If however it be not thus, if failure become 
more, and not less, frequent, there is a radical 
defect in his consecration and faith. Let such an 
one cry to God, " Search me, O God, and know 
my heart ; try me and know my thoughts, and see 
if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in 
the way everlasting." God's light will discover 
the hidden cause of failure, and what the searching 
light reveals, the precious blood will cleanse. 

Let no earnest Christian be discouraged because 
that the consciousness of sin has not become so 



FAILURE. 105 

much more painful than ever before, but rather 
give thanks that the conscience has become tender. 
The more we walk in Christ, the greater will be 
the hatred of the soul toward sin. Of Christ the 
Psalmist says, " Thou lovest righteousness, and 
hatest iniquity ; therefore God, thy God, hath 
anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy 
fellows." The often wounded conscience becomes 
indurated, while the " conscience void of offence " 

is 

11 Tender as the apple of the eye." 

Let us beware of one special snare of Satan, 
that of trying to persuade us that temptation or 
mere infirmity is sin. Christ was u tempted in 
all points like as we are, yet without sin." His 
temptations were actual and real pressures to evil. 
He yielded not, and was without sin. Neither is 
the unwelcomed, unindulged, rejected temptation 
sin to us. Of many things, as physical incapacity 
for continued earnest attention to duties before us, 
arising from defects of health or constitution, we 
may safely say, " this is my infirmity," and not 
allow Satan to condemn us. At our best, how- 



106 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

ever, we have daily to cry, " Forgive us our 
trespasses, [things we ought to have done, Greek.] 
All is imperfect in and about us, and we every 
moment need the merit of the blood of Christ as 
unprofitable servants. 

Should the question be asked, " If then you 
have found failure and condemnation at times, no 
matter how seldom, in this life of faith, wherein 
does it differ essentially from the previous expe- 
rience of conscious pardon and constant failure ? " 

It differs as a book of clear white paper, in the 
earlier pages of which the occasional marks of 
erased blots may be traced, from a book scribbled 
on every page. It differs as would differ the 
courageous, hopeful life in which there is the con- 
sciousness of power received to overcome uni- 
formly, from a life in which courage is lost by the 
assurance of defeat. It differs as the march of 
Cromwell's army, assured of victory, differed from 
that of the often defeated and discouraged royalists. 
It differs as a clear day of sunshine on Mont Blanc, 
above the level of storms, differs from the cloudy 



FAILURE. 107 

day below. A momentary shade may occur, but 
it is gone instantly.* 

The better life we seek to portray, differs from 
the former Christian life, as the sixth and eighth 
chapters of the Romans, differ from the seventh ; 

* The leading elder of a Presbyterian church, who had 
borne the character of a devoted Christian for nearly thirty 
years, but who had just experienced the full sunshine of a 
life on the mount of transfiguration, remarked that the most 
exhilarating day of physical enjoyment in his whole life was 
passed on the heights of a mountain in Switzerland. The 
guide, notwithstanding a heavy rain storm, had advised his 
party to make the ascent, promising that above the clouds 
they would find clear sunshine. Some of the party believed 
the guide, and ascended to find a magnificent and almost 
cloudless sky. The rest, not believing his statement, remained 
in the valley beneath the clouds. After a day of intense en- 
joyment, my friend descended to the hotel, and found the 
travelers who would not trust the guide watching the rain 
as it beat against the hotel windows. It was thus, he said 
with his own soul. He had believed our word, he had 
trusted Jesus, and he had entered a level of faith that was 
to his soul above the clouds. After thirty years of silence 
in the prayer meeting, his tongue was unloosed to praise 
God in the assembly, and to tell out of a full heart what it 
was to " Walk in the Light." 



108 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

as a life, the uniform characteristic and current of 
which is an abiding in Christ, differs from one of 
frequent and prolonged loss of communion ; as a 
healthful tree, which is ever expanding in every 
direction, differs from one bearing inward decay 
and weakness in all its branches. The two may 
not vary much at first in outward appearance. The 
weak one may even be the fairer to look upon, but 
the other has the full power of life. Oh ! for this 
" life more abundantly " in all of those who believe 
on Christ ! 

We would seek to encourage honest souls who 
have fully consecrated themselves to God, re- 
nounced their own wills, and trusted unreservedly 
to the promises of God, but who feel that they 
have not been as yet invariably kept from sin. 
But God forbid that we should say one word like 
making " provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts 
thereof," or open any door for the expectation of 
sinning. It is often a test of our faith, whether 
we will so cast ourselves on the promises of God, 
as to give up the old expectation of sinning. 
Nothing short of this is full faith in Jesus. To 



FAILURE. 109 

yield up the unbelief which says, " I shall some 
day fall by the hand of mine enemies," and to say 
" I can do all things through Christ strengthening 
me," is to grasp the victory of faith. There is a 
wide difference between stumbling as a sudden and 
painful surprise, and expecting to " continue in 
sin that grace may abound." Happy he who, 
walking in the light, stumbleth not. And happy, 
too, is he who, when suddenly overtaken in a 
fault, finds the failure not the cause of other 
mis-steps, but realizes that instantaneous restoration 
makes the very failure the means of future victory 
in the very direction in which the trespass has 
occurred. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LOVE, THE BOND OF PE RFECTNESS. 

THERE are those who feel that by faith they 
have found victory over the world, the flesh, 
and the devil,— that they "have put on, ... as the 
elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, 
kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long- 
suffering," and yet who feel something to be lack- 
ing in their experience. They run well for a time, 
their life seems filled with the presence and power 
of Christ, and, so far as their consciousness goes, 
they " are dead " to the world, and " their life is 
hid with Christ in God." And yet, — there is a 
yet remaining, — they find at times when they are 
suddenly jostled, the old evil seems suddenly to 
start into sight again. So long as all went calmly, 
they were like ajar of clear water, through which 
the rays of the sun shone, and in which those 

bright rays were reflected : but under sudden dis- 
nio) 



LOVE, THE BOND OF PERFECTNESS. Ill 

turbance they are like the same jar when motion 
has thrown the sediment into solution again, making 
the water dark and incapable of transmitting or 
reflecting the sun's rays. The sediment, after all, 
has remained, though for a time it was not apparent. 
They are disheartened, and exclaim, " Is there no 
effectual remedy for this ? Cannot the Christ who 
saves me, also keep me safe against being overcome 
by these sudden assaults of temptation ? " 

They have tried to watch, but it is just in the 
moment when their perseverance has relaxed that 
the assault comes. They cannot any more make 
vows, for they have but too well learned that they 
have no ability to be pledged to their fulfillment. 
Clinging becomes at times a painful effort,* and 
they feel that abiding within the citadel, and 
" kept by the power of God," is a privilege beyond 
even clinging. Prayer itself seems at times to 

* There is a beautiful picture, seen everywhere, represent- 
ing a female figure clinging in a desperation of faith to the 
Cross, while the waves surge all around ready to engulph 
her. This does indeed represent truly the soul-attitude of one 
just come to the cross; but were I the artist, I would paint 
a yet nobler and more true design, — a Cross upon an eternal 
rock, in the midst of green pastures and still waters, with a 



112 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

lack the faith which makes it effectual, and they 
are brought to that point of self-despair where, 
being at the end of all resources yet known to 
them, they are ready to learn any new lesson that 
the Spirit may teach them in the Word. 

This may be found in the words which follow 
the details of Christian graces — (i And, above all, 
put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. 
And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to 
which also ye are called in one body." Having 
received the graces of the Spirit, a girdle around 
them is needed to bind all together, and keep 
everything in its place in harmonious proportion. 
Love is this girdle, — " the bond of perfectness ." 
Love gives harmony and power to all else. If we 
" keep " ourselves " in the love of God," all other 
graces will live and thrive. Faith and hope shall 
one day give place to sight, but love is the present 

refreshed and no longer weary pilgrim peacefully resting 
beneath its shadow, and yet gazing with tearful, prayerful 
eyes, over the perishing mariners in the distance ; with the 
restfulness of imparted strength, but in the attitude of mov- 
ing toward their rescue. It is now in our power thus 
unceasingly to cling. We have our feet set upon a rock, 
with the everlasting arms beneath and supporting us. 



LOVE, THE BOND OF PERFECTNESS. 113 

and eternal condition of (he redeemed, whether 
upon earth or in heaven, who overcome — " Love 
never faileth" 

It would seem very bold to claim of God a love 
that " suffereth long and is kind," " envieth not," 
" vaunteth not itself," " is not puffed up," " is not 
easily provoked, thinketh no evil, beareth all 
things, believeth all things, endureth all things," 
— a love that answers injury, contumely, and 
reproach, by a sweetness which is without effort, 
but simply expresses the undisturbed interior calm 
of the soul. It would seem still more bold to ask 
of God this love as the unfailing garrison of the 
soul, protecting it from all assaults, however unex- 
pected or sudden. When memory recalls all the 
catalogue of past failures, and sight surveys the 
innumerable perplexities and vexations of life, 
which, even more than its deeper sorrows, form 
the momentary enemies to perfected love, well may 
sense exclaim, " Impossible ! " But here, as else- 
where in our experience, faith negatives the verdict 
of experience, sight, and sense, 

" And cries, It shall be done ! " 



114 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

At every stage of our onward progress we are 
afresh, with Abraham, called to put our trust in 
" God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those 
things which be not as though they were," and to 
be like him who " staggered not at the promise of 
God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giv- 
ing glory to God ; being fully persuaded that what 
He had promised He was able also to perform." 
This is the faith which brings God into the scene, 
and which commands this blessing of God's divine 
love abiding in us. 

The difficulty of realizing that this perfected 
trust and its accompanying perfect love is now for 
us, is lessened by the remembrance that it is not our 
own natural love, the emotions proceeding from our 
own souls, which constitute " the love of God." 
" The peace of God " is not our peace of soul 
toward God, but His own eternal peace, in which 
He dwells without change, amid all the convulsions 
of His universe, throughout eternity ; and which 
He sends down into the hearts of His trusting 
children. In like manner, " the love of God " is 
" not born of the will of the flesh, nor of the will 



LOVE, THE BOND OF PERFECTNESS. 115 

of man, but of God." It is an actual divine gift, 
like the Holy Ghost, by whom it u is shed abroad 
in our hearts." It is not a condition of soul into 
which we of ourselves can gradually grow, but a 
divine grace bestowed on and established in the 
trusting heart. 

Since it is of God, it is perfect in its character, 
free and immediate in its bestowal, and through 
a continuing faith and obedience, permanent in 
its results ; and since it is the soul's deepest 
need, kow is God's time for its reception. I 
see not how any believer need despair of its full 
power, since it is a gift, and it is from God, 
and is to be received as a gift, undeserved but 
freely bestowed. 

Once received, then follows the responsibility of 
keeping ourselves in the love of God. This injunc- 
tion is found between the a building yourselves 
upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy 
Ghost;" and the joy of " looking for the mercy of 
our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." The 
path of faith is always an advancing path, and 
yesterday's building seems to-day but as a founda- 



116 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

tion laid, so that there is the perpetual further 
building on the foundation once laid. " Praying 
in the Holy Ghost/' surely authorizes prayer that 
God's love may be " made perfect " in us up to the 
utmost limit of the present capacity of these small 
vessels. 

Oh, that this gift of God in all its fullness might 
be received into hearts which have too much 
dwelt in the changing atmosphere of failing natural 
emotions ! Listen to the tender tones of thy 
Beloved who speaks, and now says, " Rise up, my 
love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the 
winter is past, the rain is over and gone ; the 
flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the sing- 
ing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is 
heard in our land : the fig tree putteth forth her green 
figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a 
good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and 
come away." Oh, that thou wouldst abandon 
thyself to this love of Jesus until thou canst say, 
ei He brought me to the banqueting-house, and His 
banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons, 
comfort me with apples ; for I am sick of love." 



LOVE, THE BOND OF PERFECTNESS. 117 

There are those whose very hearts do melt within 
them as they experience this divinely-begotten 
love of God. 

It is the full acceptance of this love of God, 
and the creation of its response by the Holy Ghost 
in the heart, which can alone satisfy the desires of 
the Heavenly Bridegroom, who tells us that His 
" love is strong as death .... Many waters cannot 
quench love, neither can the floods drown it ; if a 
man would give all the substance of his house for 
love, it would utterly be contemned," and who 
tenderly both offers and claims such a divinely 
inwrought love from us when He says, (i Love 
Me." 

Thank God, if the feeling of the need of this 
overcoming divine love has been created in the 
heart of my reader, even though it be, for the 
moment, nigh unto despair as to experiencing it. 
The creation of a felt need of a grace promised to 
faith in the Word, is the first step, and a great one, 
toward the supply of that need. Lay that need 
before God, — hide that Word within the heart, — 
not to go away and forget it amid the myriad 



118 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

voices that are in the world and in the heart ; 
but to keep it as the soul's cry continually before 
the throne. Can there be any doubt as to the 
result ? 

Let none be discouraged if he be not yet " made 
perfect in love." The Apostle speaks of " the 
adornment of a meek and quiet spirit." In build- 
ing a house, we do not put the ornaments on it till 
the strong foundation has been laid and the walls 
erected. So we are first " rooted and built up in 
Him, and established in the faith," and then the 
diadem is put upon us u of a meek and quiet 
spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price." 
To the beholder, the adorning is the most conspic- 
uous, as well as the mbst beautiful, part of the 
house; but to the dweller, the secure foundation 
and the strong walls are the most; important. He 
who erects the house, will assuredly complete 
" God's building," in which He Himself shall 
dwell evermore. 

I find relief from the consciousness of incapa- 
city to convey the inward sense of these things, 
by quoting the quaint words of one who dwelt in 



LOVE, THE BOND OF PERFECTNESS. 119 

love and in God, about two centuries since, and 
who being dead yet speaketh : — 

" What is Love ? What shall I say of it, or how 
shall 1 in words express its nature ? It is the sweet- 
ness of life ; it is the sweet, tender, melting nature of 
God, flowing up through His seed of life into the crea- 
ture, and of all things making the creature most like 
unto Himself, both in nature and operation. It fulfills 
the law, it fulfills the gospel; it wraps up all in one, 
and brings forth all in the oneness. It excludes all 
evil out of the heart, it perfects all good in the heart. 
A touch of this love doth this in measure ; perfect love 
doth this in fullness. But how can I proceed to speak 
of it ? Oh ! that the souls of all that fear and wait 
on the Lord might feel its nature fully ; and then 
would they not fail of its sweet overcoming opera- 
tions, both towards one another and towards enemies . 
The great healing, the great conquest, the great sal- 
vation is reserved for the full manifestation of the 
love of God. His judgments, His cuttings, His hew- 
ings by the word of His mouth, are but to prepare 
for, but not to do, the great work of raising up the 
sweet building of His life, which is to be done in 
love, and in peace, and by the power thereof And 



120 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

this my soul waits and cries after, even the full 
springing up of eternal love in my heart, and in the 
swallowing of me wholly into it, and the bringing of 
my soul wholly forth in it, that the life of God in its 
own perfect sweetness may fully run forth through 
this vessel, and not be at all tinctured by the vessel, 
but perfectly tincture and change the vessel into its 
own nature. . . . 

" Oh ! how sweet is love ! How pleasant in its 
nature ! How takingly doth it behave itself in every 
condition, upon every occasion, to every person, and 
about every thing ! How tenderly, how readily, doth 
it help and serve the meanest ! How patiently, how 
meekly doth it bear all things, either from God or 
man, how unexpectedly soever they come, or how 
hard soever they seem ! How doth it believe, how 
doth it hope, how doth it excuse, how doth it cover 
even that which seemeth to be not excusable, and not 
fit to be covered ! How kind is it, even in its inter- 
pretations and charges, concerning miscarriages ! It 
never overchargeth, it never grates upon the spirit 
of him whom it reprehends ; it never hardens, it 
never provokes ; but carries a meltingness and power 
df conviction with it. This is the nature of God ; 
this, in the vessels capacitated to receive and bring 



LOVE, THE BOND OF PERFECTNESS. 121 

it forth in its glory, the power of enmity is not able 
to stand against, but falls before, and is overcome 
by it." 

Here is found a genuine humility, which, while 
it acknowledges God's work, whether in forgive- 
ness, in victory over sin, in cleansing, or in the 
divine gift of an all-pervading love, finds that " as 
when we load a vessel, the more ballast we put in, 
the lower it sinks ; so the more love we have in 
the soul, the lower are we abased in self. The 
side of the scale which is elevated is empty ; so 
the soul is elated only when it is void of love. 
" Love is our weight," says St. Augustine. Let 
us so charge ourselves with the weight of love as 
to bring self down to its just level. Let its depths 
be manifested by our readiness to bear the cross, 
the humiliations, the sufferings, which are neces- 
sary to the purification of the soul. Our humilia- 
tion is our exaltation. u Whosoever is least amonsr 
you shall be the greatest," says the Lord. . . "Let 
us die to all but God." 



CHAPTER IX. 

SUFFERING WITH CHRIST. 

WE have many who love us, many who share 
our hours of joy, many to whom we tell 
our past enjoyments or future hopes ; but those to 
whom we open the sorrows of our hearts, the in- 
ward agonies of the soul, are few, sometimes limited 
to one ; often there is not even that one. There 
must be a very peculiar and unusual knitting of 
that heart to ours, a deep conviction that our griefs 
w r ill be sympathised with, an assurance that they 
will also deeply penetrate that soul, before we can 
open out the secrets of our inward life. And when 
those recesses of our existence have been laid bare 
to any human being, he will thenceforth have a 
sacred nearness to us, infinitely beyond any mere 
fellowship in joys, hopes, or labors. We feel then 
the wonderful bond woven by a sorrow suffered by 

one, and experienced over again, through sympa- 
(122) 



SUFFERING WITH CHRIST. 123 

thy, by the other. It will take much to alienate 
those who have thus suffered together, easy as it 
may be to separate those who have only enjoyed or 
labored together. The sacred bond of a common 
grief binds closer than aught else in life. 

We rise continually from human lessons to 
divine. "I have not called you servants, but 
friends" our Lord says to those who now keep 
His commandments, as well as to those who sur- 
rounded His suffering pathway on earth. He has 
His friends to whom He unfolds that which He is 
about to do ; He has friends who share with Him 
the righteousness, the peace, and the joy in the 
Holy Ghost, which belong to the kingdom ; He 
has His friends whom He sends forth endued with 
the mighty power of the Spirit to win souls to 
Himself ; He has friends whose ear He wakeneth 
morning by morning to hear His voice, so that with 
the tongue of the learned they may speak a word 
in season to him that is weary, teaching and build- 
ing them up in their most holy faith. 

Yet there is a higher privilege than even these 
gifts and callings — a privilege which few under- 



124 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

stand, and still fewer are willing to accept It is 
that of fellowship in the sufferings of Christ. 
When the greatest of Christ's messengers was 
called, of him it was at once said, " Behold I will 
show him how great things he must suffer for My 
name's sake," and he had afterwards to say, " The 
sufferings of Christ abound in me." Paul trod in 
the footsteps of Jesus. Christ suffered, and so also 
did Paul. Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and so also 
did Paul over those within the church who were 
enemies to the crucifying power of the cross. Jesus 
was " grieved for the hardness of their hearts," and 
Paul travailed in birth again till Christ should be 
formed in the Judaizing Galatians. Of Jesus the 
Jews said, "Away with Him! away with Him! 
Crucify Him ! " and of Paul they said, " Away 
with such a fellow from the earth ; it is not fit that 
he should live ! " 

Many aspire to communion with Christ in rest 
of soul ; but few to fellowship with Him in the 
yet more sacred mystery of suffering. Many seek 
the joys of salvation, but few take that place of 
deeper intimacy with Jesus in which, while fully 



SUFFERING WITH CHRIST. 125 

settled, as to their own souls, in divine rest and 
peace, they rejoice in their sufferings for others, 
and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of 
Christ in their flesh for His body's sake, which is 
the Church. 

In the history of the ages few have recognized 
clearly the privileges of the dispensation in which 
they were placed. The wilderness was preferred 
to the promised land. Israel, under the immediate 
rule of God, sought a king. John the Baptist, " a 
prophet, and more than a prophet," although by 
the Spirit he had proclaimed Jesus the Messiah of 
Israel and the Sacrifice for the world, yet after- 
ward failed to understand the humiliation which 
must precede the glory, so that he sent his dis- 
ciples to inquire if Jesus were indeed the Christ. 
Neither the devout Jews, nor the apostles them- 
selves, understood until Pentecost that the Jewish 
dispensation of law was to be replaced by grace. 
The Galatians, even after beginning in the Spirit, 
returned to legal bondage, as have most Christians 
at some stage of their experience. The Corin- 
thians, little understanding the relation of the world 



126 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

to the Church, would reign as kings, while he 
who most nearly followed his divine Master suffered 
hunger, thirst, and every privation. 

And it is so even now. Forgetting that the 
Heir has been cast out and evil entreated, and that 
He will soon come again, professing Christians are 
found associated with or seeking the glory of this 
world ;— as Paul himself, while poor yet making 
many rich, wrote to the Corinthians, " Now are 
ye full, now are ye rich, ye have reigned as kings 
without us." This applies not so much to the 
outward circumstances of Christians, which in the 
providence of God may vary greatly, but to the 
inward character of their lives ; for a rich man 
may be poor in spirit, while the poor man may be 
unduly exalted. 

What, then, is it to suffer with Christ, as the 
peculiar joy of intimate fellowship, to which we 
are in this dispensation invited ? — a privilege of 
which it is said : — " If so be that we staffer 
ivith Him, that we may be also glorified 
together." It surely is not to receive the ordained 
consequences of our own follies or sins. 'This is 



SUFFERING WITH CHRIST. 127 

common to mankind, for it is not to unconverted 
sinners alone that the words apply, " He that sow- 
eth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption." 
It is not the usual sorrows of humanity ; for, from 
the inevitable sufferings of this life,Christians have 
the sting extracted, and they suffer not more but 
less than other men. It is rather — 

I. Suffering persecution for Christ's sake. 

II. Sharing the sorrow of Christ over the Church, 
adulterously united to the world. 

III. Fellowship in the grief of Christ over those 
who reject His salvation. 

SUFFERING PERSECUTION. 

It is sometimes said by professing Christians, 
" I do not suffer persecution. Has not persecution 
ceased to be the Christian's lot? " The answer is 
searching, "Yea, all that will live godly in Christ 
Jesus shall suffer persecution" If you have 
not suffered persecution, are you among the 
apostle's " all " ? Many believers generally 
escape persecution, who will be found in heaven at 
last — saved, yet so as by fire ; but it cannot be that 
one who has lived godly in Christ Jesus can have 



128 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

failed to receive his share. It is one thing to walk 
after a godly sort in a general way, and perhaps it 
will be found a very different thing to walk " in 
Christ Jesus." Such will attract censure to their 
ways, alas ! more often from failing professors than 
from the world outside. Their life is so hid with 
Christ, that few around them understand them. 
They seem alone because they are so constantly 
with Jesus. Prosperity does not exalt nor sorrow 
depress them. Having Christ, they are well satis- 
fied with whatever may befall them. Crucified to 
the world, they are now no longer of it. How 
often, from the martyrdom of Stephen to our own 
day, have we seen it fulfilled that " when reproached 
for the name of Christ," " the Spirit of glory and 
of God resteth " on them. It is a blessed thing to 
rejoice in being " counted worthy to suffer shame 
for His name," and to esteem the reproach of Christ 
as our greatest riches, gladly arming ourselves with 
the same mind as was in Christ, who suffered for 
us in the flesh ; knowing that, just in proportion as 
we live thus in Christ here/so shall be our place in 
the distribution of the heavenly rewards in eternity. 



SUFFERING WITH CHRIST. 129 

SORROW FOR THE CHURCH. 

Paul placed his feet in the footprints of Jesus. 
He felt as Jesus felt. He rejoiced as Jesus rejoiced, 
and wept as Jesus wept. He served the Ephesians 
in the gospel " with many tears," warning "every- 
one night and day with tears." He wrote to the 
Corinthians of their failures " with many tears." 
He tells of " enemies of the cross of Christ " among 
the Philippians, "even weeping." This was not 
mere human sympathy, but a divinely-begotten 
sorrow. The sufferings of Christ abounded in 
him ; and these afflictions, he tells us, were effect- 
ual, in his endurance of them, for their " consola- 
tion and salvation." 

One of the sweetest remembrances of my life is 
that of a loving disciple, whose sorrow over the 
condition of the Church seemed to know no bounds. 
Finding that for a succession of nights he slept but 
little, I pressed him for the cause, when with some 
reluctance he replied that the corruptions of the 
Church of God so weighed upon his heart, that 
sleep left his eyes. Li^e the mourning Jeremiah, 
he lived weeping and interceding for the people of 



130 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

God. I felt then, and again years afterward, when 
he fell asleep in Jesus while upon his knees in 
prayer, that his place of "filling up that which is 
behind of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh, for 
His body's sake, which is the Church," was one of 
peculiar nearness to the Man of Sorrows. 

And do you now, my dear reader, seem to hear 
Jesus saying to your heart, Canst thou "drink of 
the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the 
baptism that I am baptized with ? " Art thou 
willing to come into such a sense of the abounding 
iniquity around thee as to exclaim, " Oh that my 
head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of 
tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain 
of the daughter of my people ! " " O wall of the 
daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river 
day and night ! " It is from such experiences of 
suffering with Christ that the Christian comes forth 
from the closet, endued with the divine gentleness 
and power of Christ, to mightily stir the hearts of 
those who have unhappily lost their first love, and 
to kindle the flame of his own soul upon theirs. 
And it is such experiences that let us into, as it 



SUFFERING WITH CHRIST. 131 

were, the very heart of Christ, to an extent im- 
possible to fellowship in joy or labor alone. 

SORROW FOR THE WORLD. 

The foundations of our holy religion were laid 
in suffering, and they who drink most deeply into 
its spirit will be found to share the sufferings of its 
divine Founder, not indeed in any sense of atone- 
ment, but as "all higher natures must suffer for 
the lower," in going into their condition in spirit, 
that they may lift them up. 

When the covetousness of men had made the 
^voyage to Australia almost like "the middle 
passage " of African slaves, there was found one 
devoted man who, in order to be able to represent 
and remedy the fearful suffering of the emigrants, 
experienced it himself by a passage among them. 
The divinely tendered spirit, deeply centered ia 
Christ, 

* * At leisure from itself, 
To soothe and sympathise," 

* will be baptized into a sense of the condition of 
those for whom it prays and labors, and thus it can 



132 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

effectually reach the hearts whose state has been by 
sympathy its own. There are those who know 
what it is to agonize for and with sinful souls, in a 
sorrow far beyond any personal grief for losses and 
bereavements. 

There is, then, an infinite proportion between 
our close following of Christ here, and our eternal 
position in the kingdom. Faithful service here 
and the ten cities there, are one. The small end 
of. the lever, moved by faithfulness here, sweeps 
the long arm in the heavens, and through the 
countless ages of eternity. Even the cup of cold 
water here has its everlasting reward in the com- 
ing dispensations. But amid all the rewards of 
grace to the blood-bought children, none shall bring 
us so near to Jesus as fellowship in the sufferings 
of a rejected Saviour in a day of general failure — 
" If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may 
be also glorified together." For once that I pray 
for joy, I find my heart many times asking that I 
may be privileged to " fill up that which is behind 
of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh, for His body's % 
sake, which is the Church." It is to this divine 



SUFFERING WITH CHRIST. 133 

fellowship in suffering, this sacred nearness to a 
suffering Saviour, that our Lord now invites His 
faithful disciples. 

We do not, however, have wholly to wait for 
another dispensation for the rejoicing. There is a 
divine and deep joy in suffering, when it is for 
Christ. In proportion " as the sufferings of Christ 
abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by 
Christ." Doubtless Paul and Silas felt keenly 
their situation in the stocks within the inner prison, 
but a joy welled up in their souls, such as found 
vent in praises, louder, doubtless, than in scenes of 
ordinary prosperity. They were "rejoicing that 
they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His 
name." Our Lord was " despised and rejected of 
men, a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," 
yet in the midst of all He " rejoiced in spirit " as 
He saw the deep things of God revealed to the 
child-like hearts around Him. It is an exquisite 
joy to relieve the suffering of the battle-field and 
the hospital, and to carry the message of mercy to 
dying men ; and yet these scenes were among the 
most painful of our lives. Many are the burdens 



134 WALKING IS THE LIGHT. 

and sorrows of a time of revival of God's work in 
the souls of men to every sensitive heart, and yet 
who would forego the holy joy of such scenes ? It 
is those who share the deep sorrows of Christ, who 
share all the joy of His work. 

" Can words tell the joy it is to be consoled by 
God ? Are not souls whom He has touched 
obliged to hold their tongues, because they have 
no words to express the happiness it was ? " 

The peace of God which passeth all understand- 
ing, God's own divine eternal peace, is " shed abroad 
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost," and " multi- 
plied " in an especial manner, when our souls grasp 
the privilege of " rilling up that which is behind 
of the afflictions of Christ, . . for His body's sake, 
which is the Church." He who takes the suffering 
without the " multiplied " peace, will have a heavy 
burden to carry ; while he who first accepts Christ's 
unchanging soul-sabbath, will, indeed, find a yoke 
and many burdens ; but the Lord Himself is his 
yoke-sharer, and his burden-bearer. He sweetly 
carries us and our burdens too. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 

HAVING always known that upon conver- 
sion, the believer received the Holy Spirit, 
and that His guidance and power would be known, 
when needed, in unfolding the treasures of Scrip- 
ture, in service or in trials, I had not looked for 
any other special manifestations of His presence. 
And yet there was a large class of passages in the 
Old and in the New Testament, the conditions 
of which were not fully met by any consciousness 
of my own, full as had been the knowledge of 
pardon, adoption and standing in Christ; nor yet 
by a later experience, which came to me ten years 
after my conversion, of the wonderful inward 
cleansing of the blood " from all sin." 

I had read, " Whosoever drinketh of the water 
that I shall give him, shall never thirst ; but the 

water that I shall give him shall be in him a well 
(135) 



136 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

of water springing up into everlasting life." This 
was not true in my experience, in the full meaning 
evidently intended by the words. There did not 
always, from my heart, " flow rivers of living 
water " freely and spontaneously. Too often the 
force-pump, rather than the fountain, would have 
represented my condition. As I gazed in the 
mirror of the Word, upon the glorious person of 
my Lord, my soul was often bowed in ador- 
ing love, but I had never come to " know ' 
(John xiv. 17) the Comforter in such a fullness 
that I could realize His indwelling presence as 
even better than that of the visible person of 
Jesus. 

I had read that as men were " possessed " by an 
evil spirit, and led to do things far beyond their 
natural powers, so those " filled with the Spirit," 
seemed to be carried out of, and beyond themselves. 
I had read the charge against the Apostles, of 
being " druilken," and that afterward Paul brought 
the same thought of the elevation of wine, as the 
illustration of being " filled with the Spirit." 
This seemed to be an ordained condition, since 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 137 

God's commands are always promises, just as His 
promises are commands ; the promises being always 
larger even than the commands. As yet I had 
never known, in my own consciousness, a being 
thus " filled with the Spirit," or the meaning of 
John the Baptist's declaration, " He shall baptize 
you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." 

So ignorant was I, even in the matters of the 
greatest importance to my spiritual interests, that, 
in finding the inward cleansing and the outward 
" victory " over sin, — that " faith which overcom* 
eth " the world, — I did not press beyond my edu- 
cational habits of thought, to recognize that a far 
more glorious manifestation of God was yet to be 
known by the Spirit. I then scarcely noticed that 
it was after our Lord had breathed on His disci- 
ples with the words " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," 
they had yet to wait ten days at one time in prayer- 
ful expectation for the more full baptism of the 
Spirit ; nor that it was sometime after this event, 
that, u When they had prayed, the place was shaken 
where they were assembled together, and they were 
all filled with the Holy Ghost." I was not, indeed, 



138 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

in the condition of the " disciples " who as yet had 
" not so much as heard whether there be any Holy 
Ghost ; " and yet I had formed no conception of 
what the promised baptism "with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire " could be. 

Deeply thankful for the privileges of " sanctifi- 
cation through faith/"' realized in an unexpected 
fullness a few months before, I one day joined in 
the woods a few Christians who had met to wait 
before God for the baptism of the Spirit. Except 
a few low hymns or brief prayers, the half hour 
was spent in solemn silence. At length " there 
came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty 
wind, and it filled all the [place] where they were 
sitting : " — no uninspired words could so describe 
my impressions. And yet no leaf above nor blade 
of grass below was moved, — all nature was still. 
It was to our souls, not to our senses, that the 
Lord revealed Himself by the Spirit. My whole 
being seemed unutterably full of the God upon 
whom I had long believed. The perceptions of 
my senses could bring no such consciousness as 
was now mine. I understood the super-sensual 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 139 

visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Paul. No created 
thing was now so real to my soul as the Creator 
Himself. It was awful, yet without terror. I lost 
no part of my senses, and yet they were all wrapped 
up in the sublime manifestation. A question put 
to me was answered as briefly as possible, that my 
soul might lose nothing of the heavenly presence 
enwrapping and filling my being. I do not re- 
member to have then told any one of it, but days 
afterward, when I rejoined my wife, she burst into 
tears as we met, before we had spoken a word, so 
great was the change in my appearance. " Songs 
in the night season," the living waters welling up 
from my heart, came with the consciousness of 
waking. An awe, sweet but not burdensome, 
shadowed my spirit, as every moment was filled 
with the presence of God ; nor did it leave me in 
the midst of the most engrossing occupations. 
Life became a psalm of praise. 

This elevation of feeling necessarily subsided 
after a season, but it left me with an inner con- 
sciousness of God which is expressed by the 
words : " I will dwell in them, and walk in them." 



140 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

" We will come to Him, and make our abode with 
Him." The scene upon the Cross of Calvary, 
became often more real than the senses could make 
it. Without the materiality of bodily sight, the 
holy countenance of Jesus, in its tender, suffering 
humanity, lightened by the glory of divinity, 
seems now to me to look down from the Cross, 
upon assemblies, as I tell of redemption for sin- 
ners. It is painful to endeavor to speak of these 
things. My poor words seem rather to cover than 
to reveal them. Would that the glorious reality 
could be conveyed to other hearts ! 

After walking with little variation for five years 
in this privilege of an inward consciousness of the 
presence of God, and with comparatively little 
exception a conscience void af offence, I became, by 
the ever increasing light, aware of forms of selfish- 
ness, self-consciousness, self-dependence and self- 
seeking not before recognized. I was as an Israelite 
in whose home was a defiling bone, before the sun 
had fully risen. By the grey morning light he had 
cleansed his dwelling, and was without condemna- 
tion of conscience, but when the noon-tide sun 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 141 

poured in his rays, the evil thing was discovered, — 
to be now put away. 

At once the prayer of faith came, " Cleanse me 
from this also, O my Saviour! " with full confidence 
that it would be done. Soon afterward, as I 
kneeled in a large meeting of Christians waiting 
patiently upon God in silent prayer, I seemed to 
see Jesus sitting above me as a " Refiner " with 
fire. Then there passed through my soul as it 
had been flame, consuming the very evils concern- 
ing which I had beeu praying. I cannot find 
words so exact to describe it as the Scripture, " He 
shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver ; and He 
shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as 
gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord 
an offering in righteousness." To my surprise, I 
did not appear to shrink from the fire, but gladly 
welcomed it, as I seemed to look into the vividly 
revealed and compassionately tender countenance 
of my Saviour. I then understood in a far deeper 
sense than ever before, the words', " Sanctify you 
wholly" for all that I could myself see of my 
dross seemed to me to be burned up. 



142 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

This was without much emotion, but wonder- 
fully real to my soul. It was followed by some of 
the most severe sorrows and temptations, which I 
had known for a long time, but in them all I was 
enabled to get inward deliverance by faith in Christ 
as my Refiner with fire. 

About this time a few Christians, from five dif- 
ferent denominations, among them six ministers, 
gathered together in some evening meetings, with 
the special object of finding out, through prayer, 
the full meaning of " the promise of the Father," 
the being "baptized with fire," the being " filled 
with the Spirit." They were walking in close 
communion with the Lord, and in the paths of 
" sanctification through faith," and yet they knew 
that there was a fullness of blessing in the baptism 
of the Holy Spirit, which they had not yet experi- 
enced. Feeling their liability to interpret the 
Scripture by their own educational prepossessions, 
they resorted to continued prayer, and waiting 
upon God, to teach them Himself the meaning 
of His Word and promise. 

The first evening, while a Presbyterian minister 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 143 

was in prayer, a preacher, well known on both 
sides of the Atlantic, of calm, intellectual habits 
of feeling, who had been praying for this baptism 
for two months, was without losing consciousness 
so overwhelmed by the manifested presence of Jesus, 
as to lie, with clasped hands, and a look of heav- 
enly joy, speechless for several hours. " I seemed 
mercifully shut out from intercourse with the 
world for a time, that I might- enjoy the presence 
of Jesus. After several hours I was just able to 
whisper, ' The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly 
come to His temple, the rest I cannot tell.' Then, 
after a time, ' It is the refiner's fire and the fuller's 
soap. I always used to think it would be so 
dreadful, but it is so sweet.' I remained thus till 
noon the next day, shut up alone with God, occa- 
sionally telling a little of the sweetness and the 
glory of the revelations of Christ's love, but too 
anxious not to miss a word of what He had to 
tell me, to speak much. I seemed to be intro- 
duced into the very presence of the Lord, as 
though I saw Him face to face, and actually heard 
His voice. How I rejoiced to have that refining 



144 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

fire burn and burn until it seemed to consume all 
the dross away. I could almost see the fan in His 
hand, thoroughly purging His floor, and separat- 
ing the chaff from the wheat. ' Oh ! how I shall 
love to preach for Him now ! ' I exclaimed. ■ I 
always loved it, but now it will be so different and 
so sweet.' I now loved every one, even those 
whom it had before seemed impossible to love. It 
was all love, love ! 

"It was hard to come back to the burden of 
common life again, but I felt that it was needful. 
I had to part with the vividness of these mani- 
festations, as they would make the duties of ordi- 
nary life impossible." 

All this, coming to a person so intellectual, so 
calm and so reserved ; one, too, whose life of devot- 
edness had been so long and so remarkable, and 
who had manifested so much of the presence 
and power of the Holy Ghost in service, seemed 
an unmistakable answer to our prayers for enlight- 
enment, as to whether it is the privilege of every 
believer in the Lord Jesus to receive at some time 
during their Christian cirecr, the conscious, defi- 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 145 

nite baptism of the Holy Ghost, similar to that on 
the day of Pentecost, and afterwards during the 
Apostles' ministry, as recorded in the Scriptures. 
We all felt that the answer was, ic Yes," and that 
the responsibility now rested with each one to 
"tarry at Jerusalem," until thus baptized in a 
manner different from the usual degree of the 
Spirit's power and presence, which most Christians 
realize, — the full possession and thorough trans- 
formation, consciously and manifestly, of the whole 
being. " For the promise " that "ye shall receive 
the gift of the Holy Ghost," " is unto you, and 
to your children, and to all that are afar off, even 
as many as the Lord our God shall call." 

An instance of the permanent endowment of this 
powerful Baptism of the Spirit, when followed by a 
full obedience, is found in the history of a widely- 
known physician. About twenty-four years ago 
he had placed under his medical care a married 
woman, in advanced consumption, who felt a 
direct call of God to leave her home and go to 
his hospital. She was fully given over to die by 
her doctors, and even was taken with bleeding 



146 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

at the lungs for twenty consecutive days. She 
could not speak above a whisper, and her death 
was expected hourly. She, however, one day 
spoke of having faith to be healed, and asked the 
physician to pray for her. Thinking her too weak 
to bear vocal prayer, he retired to his room, and 
was able to ask in faith that six years more of life 
should be given her. After fainting twice in efforts 
to move her in the bed, she was almost instantly 
restored to her strength, so as in a few days to be 
able to travel by stage in bitter cold weather alone 
to her own home. She lived the six years claimed 
by faith — years of wonderful gospel power and 
blessing in Christian work, and then died in 
triumph and hope. 

During her illness she had presented to her 
young physician the subject of sanctification by 
faith, the perpetual abiding in Christ as his 
immediate privilege. He heard at first with 
intense prejudice, but finally was led to give to 
God one cherished idol after another in detail, and 
after four weeks of struggle and yielding, on one 
occasion, toward daylight, he resigned to Christ 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 147 

the very last of all that he had been conscious 
of holding as his own. Then it was as though 
the heavens were opened upon his soul in a sense 
of the glory of God; but instead of resting on him, 
it soon seemed to vanish. He cried, "Why, 
Lord ? " and an answer came, " Tou are stubborn 
and willful." " Wherein, Lord ? " he asked. " Tou 
will not," was the reply, " confess and testify be- 
fore men to the truth of sanctification by faith." 
He then yielded this point, also, and was at once 
filled with the presence of God by a wonderful 
baptism of the Spirit. He says that he has not 
had an unhappy day since, nor one day without 
the solemn, inward consciousness of God which is 
expressed by the words, " Christ formed within," 
" Christ in you," " Ye are the temple of the Holy 
Ghost." 

Immediately his life work took form in the con- 
tinual cry of his soul, " Thy will be done." His 
heart and will became a perpetual " Yes " to every 
call of God. He always realizes that, even in the 
small details of life, God has a will for his children, 
some way that is better than any other, and that 



148 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

he will communicate this to the waiting soul ; that 
when the many voices of self-will, prejudice, and 
enthusiasm are stilled within, and the outward 
calls held in abeyance, " a still small voice " comes 
with satisfying certainty to the soul, saying, " This 
is the way ; walk thou in it." In it are the highest 
possible results of inward peace and outward suc- 
cess. Twenty-three years of close attention to this 
sacred teaching, with implicit, instantaneous obedi- 
ence, have made his senses to " grow by reason of 
use," and imparted a wonderful, indescribable gen- 
tleness, sweetness, and power to his very appear- 
ance and voice, joined to a resistless authority. 
I have never witnessed the character of the head 
of a private family more impressed upon the faces 
and motions of a household, than is that of this 
man of faith upon every worker, down to the 
humblest servant. I never saw an ungentle ex- 
pression, or heard an ungentle word in the house. 
The very atmosphere of the place is filled with the 
pervading, sensible presence of the love of God. 
There is a simplicity, a quiet restfulness, a hidden 
power in the religious exercises of his household, 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIEIT. 149 

which, with the whole atmosphere of the house- 
hold, has brought a continuous revival since the 
opening of this House of Faith, twenty-three years 
ago. Thousands upon thousands, probably, have 
been converted, or lifted into higher experiences 
of the love of God, in this holy, beautiful home. 
Weary souls find the soothing influences so sweet 
and pervading, that, like the Lotus-eaters, they 
scarcely can force themselves away. Chance 
travelers stopping for a night often are chained, 
and leave only to seek the first opportunity of 
return. These statements may seem strong to 
strangers, but they will not be so to those who 
have shared the privileges of this household of 
faith. 

The baptism of the Spirit has not been a tran- 
sient joy, but an abiding grace through near a 
quarter of a century, bearing fruitage to God such 
as it has been the lot of few of God's children 
to witness. 

It is not unusual for this wonderful baptism of 
the Holy Spirit, of which we write, to accompany 
the commencement of " walking in the light ; " but 



150 WALKING IN THE LIGHT. 

in the larger number of instances coming under my 
own observation, an entrance upon a life of perfect 
trust has been by simple faith alone, without im- 
mediate strong emotion, or the baptism of the 
Holy Spirit. Concerning its reality and certainty, 
hundreds, if not thousands, whom I have personal- 
ly met, are witnesses of its suddenness, and of its 
permanent results in their character and labors. 
If a man born blind, and reared without ever see- 
ing the light, were cured, and then promised a 
sight of the sun, we can conceive that when he 
saw a candle, he might ask, "Is this it?" Or 
again, when he saw the moon, " Is this it ? " But 
when he should see the sun, he would ask no 
questions, but exclaim, " This is it ! " Thus I can 
conceive of questioning as to having received this 
grace among those yet without this remarkable 
and apostolic baptism, so often renewed to the 
saints in all ages; but those who have once ex- 
perienced it in its fullness say, as the restored 
blind man to the sun, " This is it I " 

For this, my reader, pray. For this, trust the 
promises of God. For this, wait in holy expecta- 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIEIT. 



151 



tion, if need be, as long as did the first disciples. 
Having received it with its ineffaceable results in 
your life, ask that it be renewed on every occasion 
of need. Have faith to be always "filled with the 
Spirit," whether in its mighty, rushing power for 
service, or in its gentle, dew-like coming, to possess 
and mold the heart for Christ. 




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